In this episode recorded during the Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour, Alabama State Rep. Chip Brown joins Jenny Beth to discuss the fight for election integrity, the importance of the SAVE Act, and Alabama’s leadership in passing voter ID and ensuring only citizens vote. Chip also shares his military service after 9/11, efforts to strengthen Alabama’s ports, and his work to protect the state’s commercial seafood industry from unfair foreign competition. Don’t miss this conversation on securing America’s elections, defending local industries, and preserving freedom in Alabama and beyond.
In this episode recorded during the Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour, Alabama State Rep. Chip Brown joins Jenny Beth to discuss the fight for election integrity, the importance of the SAVE Act, and Alabama’s leadership in passing voter ID and ensuring only citizens vote. Chip also shares his military service after 9/11, efforts to strengthen Alabama’s ports, and his work to protect the state’s commercial seafood industry from unfair foreign competition. Don’t miss this conversation on securing America’s elections, defending local industries, and preserving freedom in Alabama and beyond.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChipBrownHouseDistrict105
Website: https://www.chipbrown105.com/
Chip Brown (00:00):
We are a beacon of light and hope and freedom around the world. And if that's undermined by not having safe and secure elections, we're really sending a message to these other nations that we preach one thing, but yet we don't follow up here at the state. Federal level,
Narrator (00:20):
Keeping our republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author of filmmaker and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she's most proud of is Mom to Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:52):
We are still on the only Citizens Vote bus tour, and we are in the great state of Alabama. I'm sitting right outside the state capitol in Montgomery, and today we are joined by a state representative who is also the vice chairman of the Republican caucus. His name is Chip Brown. He spoke at our press conference in Montgomery today and now he's going to sit down with me. We're going to learn a little bit more about why he's supports the Save Act and what he's doing in Alabama. Thank you for speaking in our press conference. We really appreciated having you there. Let's start first with why you're supportive of the Save Act and then we can shift to what you're doing in Alabama.
Chip Brown (01:27):
Sure. Well, lemme just say too that I'm honored that you came to Montgomery Capital that has such a historic past and Alabama has really been at the forefront of election integrity. In 2013, we passed voter ID legislation, and that's across the board for local elections, state and federal elections. And then we've also passed in 2020 legislation that required only US citizens could vote. Our Secretary, secretary of State West Allen has also been the forefront of that in purging non-citizens off of our voter rolls. And that brought in the Biden administration, of course, tried to take him to court to stop it, but it's so crucial that we have election integrity in the United States, not just in Alabama, but in other states. Because if you as a republic, it's important that we as citizens know that our elections are fair and that they're safe and secure, and that the individuals that we elect actually won the vote that your vote counts. I think all too often there's questions about that.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:40):
Yeah, those questions are not good because they undermine the faith in the election system and that faith in the election system and the trust in it is fundamental to a constitutional republic. You can't have a republic give people, which is a representative democracy if people don't think that they're actually electing their representatives.
Chip Brown (03:05):
That's right. That's exactly right. We are a beacon of light and hope and freedom around the world, and if that's undermined by not having, having safe and secure elections, we're really sending a message to these other nations that we preach one thing, but yet we don't follow up here at the state and federal level. And there's so many countries around the world that people would love to have the opportunity to go and vote that are in situations where they have ruthless dictators, their voice is not heard Here in the United States, we have to make sure that voices really are heard by having safe and secure elections.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:52):
That's very important. Now how long have you been a state representative?
Chip Brown (03:57):
Since 2018.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:58):
2018. So you saw that constitutional amendment get passed and what drew you to running for state
Chip Brown (04:06):
Rep? Well, I just always was brought up with a belief in public service. My father was a veteran, retired as a colonel in the Army, national Guard was a Marine, and then he saw a need in our community and so he ran for city council and then ended up getting elected mayor. And I saw the way that he served and he gave back to his community. And so actually the week after nine 11, I went down and joined the National Guard at age 32 and deployed with the National Guard and then later on went and did two deployments in Afghanistan as an advisor for US forces Afghanistan. And a seat came open and I thought it would be a great way to help serve my community and bring some attention to some of the issues that the people of my district face. So I'm very honored to serve. I'm actually going running again for my third term this time. I chair the committee on ports and waterways in the house.
Jenny Beth Martin (05:10):
That's very important to the state of Alabama.
Chip Brown (05:12):
It is. It is. The port of mobile is one of the fastest growing ports in the United States. Our container terminal actually is the second fastest growing in the United States, and our coal terminal is the number one fastest growing coal terminal in the United States.
Jenny Beth Martin (05:27):
Oh, that's great. So I used to work for the Home Depot and I programmed computers and I programmed computers that dealt with international orders and container ships and all of that. So very familiar with the ports and the containers and the distribution centers. And they're so important to our supply chain and being able to get products when we want because so much is made overseas now.
Chip Brown (05:56):
That's right. And as we move into what are called post panamax ships, which are larger, wider, deeper ships, after they widened and deepened the Panama Canal, several years ago, of course, commerce followed and started building bigger ships. But the problem with that is you have to dig out and widen and deepen your ship channel. So in Alabama we saw that years ago. And so in 2019 we passed legislation that allowed us to get a federal match through Senator Shelby. And we're right at the very end of widening and deepen our port. And when that's done, we'll have the widest and deepest port in the Gulf of Mexico. So we have an opportunity to be the first port of call and jump over existing ports like New Orleans and possibly Tampa. Yeah,
Jenny Beth Martin (06:46):
That's very good. And then you said that you signed up to serve in the military right after nine 11, so you really are a patriot.
Chip Brown (06:54):
Well, I think it's just doing my duty, but thank you.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:57):
Yeah, but you had that call and you answered it, and I appreciate that. I know many people who did that, and I just really have so much respect for people who stepped up, especially in the weeks following that. What other kinds of legislations do you work on?
Chip Brown (07:20):
Well, it's common for people to get elected to, whether it be Congress, the legislature, and they stay in their realm of what they know. But I take more of a buckshot approach and I've passed legislation dealing with public-private partnerships for allowing all of our airports in Alabama to enter into public-private partnerships that allows them to grow without money coming from the taxpayers. I've passed several crime related pieces of legislation. I passed the first sexual assault task force legislation in Alabama that for the first time there's a playbook from the time that the person is arrested to how evidence's collected, how the kits are handled, what step by step by step, all the way through the appellate process. And that way every jurisdiction is on the same playbook and it lessens the opportunity for mishandling evidence or that sort of thing. And then also on that passed piece of legislation that it in my opinion, should be a model for the rest of the United States.
Chip Brown (08:32):
I've had several states reach out to me that in Alabama, it used to be that the only time you could be held without bond is if you were accused of a capital crime, which is murder, first degree murder. So you had individuals that were serial rapists that were committed murders, all sorts of things, but they guaranteed bond. We even had a judge in mobile that had a billboard, well, a poster board in his courtroom of the eighth amendment. And anytime that the prosecutor would ask for a higher bail amount, higher bond amount, he would point to that poster and say, no, he's going to have to get out. And so we did. Legislation that I carried took me three years, and it's named AYAs Law, and it's named after a young girl that was from Birmingham that had gone to a funeral and went back to Auburn where she was going to school at Southern Union Junior College. And an individual in the store saw her, followed her out to her car, kidnapped her, assaulted her, and killed her. And he was out on bond for an attempted kidnapping. Well, yeah, well, not typical for a kidnapping, a robbery, an assault. And he had the victim in the car with him when he was pulled over and he was out on bond and just happened to randomly see her. He should have never been out.
Chip Brown (10:06):
And so that is called Anias Law. It was passed by the voters and overwhelmingly had over a million votes for it. So that's the legislation I'm most proud of. I carry a lot of tax credit bills for industry for shipping through the Port of Mobile, the Port of Alabama. But then also I do a lot of commercial seafood legislation that's very important to my district. Commercial seafood is a generational occupation in my district that's unfortunately dying away.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:42):
Is it dying away? And is there a way to protect it without adding too much government interference that it changes the markets?
Chip Brown (10:50):
It's largely dying away due to federal regulations.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:56):
That's awful.
Chip Brown (10:57):
The federal government administration after administration has ignored commercial seafood on one side, but then also through U-S-A-I-D through the World Bank, we have gone over and modernized seafood industries around the world. And then once they're up and going and modern, even more modern than what we have here in the United States, because we're not subsidized, they don't charge them tariffs to import their seafood into the United States. And so it has had a huge detrimental impact on commercial seafood in the United States. So
Jenny Beth Martin (11:36):
Are those other shipping and the shipping, I'm sorry, the seafood industry in the other countries, are they subsidized?
Chip Brown (11:45):
They are subsidized
Jenny Beth Martin (11:46):
By their governments,
Chip Brown (11:46):
By their government. So you take one like India, we modernize their commercial seafood industry. They can take a loss because the government in India subsidizes them. And what they do, they come, they don't get charged tariffs initially. So they flood the market in the United States with seafood from their countries. And then when we finally do impose a tariff, they've already bought up all the cold storage in the United States. So then once the tariff is finally in place years after that, Ecuador is the greatest example. Ecuador, we did that in Ecuador and it took four or five, six years before they even considered putting a tariff on Ecuador. And when the tariff went in place, they already had cold storage of shrimp in place so that they were able to flood the market even after the tariff went into effect. And the Trump administration is really the first one that has put agriculture and commercial seafood at the forefront of their trade negotiations. I was in Washington two or three weeks ago and had an opportunity to speak to the Commerce Secretary Lutnick, and that's the question I asked is right now we are benefiting from those tariffs. Please continue them and give our guys at least a level playing field, an opportunity to be a success. And he assured me that that's what they're doing. That's part of every trade negotiation is agriculture and commercial seafood.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:26):
So I may get some of these details wrong because I haven't studied this issue in a while, but did you know there is an Open Skies treaty and it says that if you're flying planes into America, you cannot have government subsidized flights into America that you have to compete without government subsidies because our airlines, they can't compete with other governments. Governments have more money than an individual company, even the biggest individual companies in America. And if they're coming in and undercutting it, undercutting because of government subsidies, undercutting the price for American Airlines, then they're not allowed to fly into our country. It makes sense, right? It does make sense. And we need, from a national security standpoint, we actually need those flights up and running. When COVID happened, we were flying people back into the country and the airlines step up when they need to help us move people around the country as needed.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:30):
There's a national security interest with our airlines. And I heard then I said, well, it kind of makes sense. But then over the years I've learned that there's so many other industries that are competing with government subsidies and they're small American businesses. They're not as big as the big airlines. And that's not fair. It's not right. It's not a level playing field, and it really winds up harming our businesses. And now you're talking about the seafood industry here in America is dying out and we're letting it happen because we're letting these foreign governments basically help kill off our corporations. That's wrong.
Chip Brown (15:14):
It is wrong. And it's not only that, but our government agencies have been actively participating in willingly doing it. Noah who regulates commercial seafood had on their website until the Trump administration, if you went down and you found it, they had in there their plans for the future of commercial seafood. And it essentially was to put commercial seafood out business and have everything be farm raised in pens out in the Gulf of America, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, because of global warming or crisis or climate change because the boats put off too much CO2. But that's just a bad precedent anyway from a standpoint of spreading diseases among fish species or shrimp species or what have you.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:16):
Well, and that would affect the environment as well if we start having farms in the middle of that many farms in the middle of the ocean,
Chip Brown (16:23):
But it's an agency actively trying to put an industry out of business
Chip Brown (16:29):
For large. I mean, who's going to do the farming? It's going to be large, multinational global corporations that are controlled by whomever. They're not run by local folks in my district that are multi-generational. I know families that have been in the commercial seafood industry since the 19th century. I know someone that has the oyster harvesting license number one that was issued in the late 19th century. They're all going away. They're aging out. Unfortunately. It's like agriculture. If you look at the family farm, the average age is 60 something, 70 something, and commercial seafoods the same way. Unfortunately, we're trying to, if that goes away, then we're really going to be in a very bad situation. So hopefully the Trump administration can continue on with their tariff policies and try to level the playing field because at the state level, so much of that is a federal issue that at the state level, what I have to do is I have to look for opportunities regarding state tax credits, a pass to bill that dealt with truth and labeling. So if you go to a restaurant, they have to tell you where the seafood came from, if it's foreign, if it's domestic, it's wild caught or if it's farm raised. And that plays right in, I dunno if you saw last week, Walmart issued a recall on shrimp from Indonesia because it was radioactive.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:01):
Yeah, that's not a good thing. We don't want to be any radioactive food. It's
Chip Brown (18:05):
Terrible.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:05):
Talk about bad for Maha.
Chip Brown (18:08):
That's right, that's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:10):
I think that I've heard many people who are conservative who are against tariffs say that they want free trade. And I don't know that they're talking about free trade, fair trade, but they want free trade. And they feel like if we can have businesses crossing countries, that is a good thing. And I completely agree with that. But when you have an American company that is backed by private capital trying to compete against corporations that are owned in part by the Chinese Communist government or the country of India or any other country, it makes it really hard for the smaller American businesses and even I would imagine medium and big American businesses to be able to compete with those foreign governments. A business can't just print money and give themselves enough money to keep on going. Foreign governments are able to do that. We can't do that as business owners. So I always just go, it sounds really good in your ivory tower, but get out in the real world and talk to the people who are actually in these industries and understand if you're for free trade, it should be free trade. That's not free trade. That's governments competing against businesses.
Chip Brown (19:38):
Well, in an ideal world, laissez-faire economics would be the ideal situation where,
Jenny Beth Martin (19:46):
And the governments would be hands off. All of the governments
Chip Brown (19:48):
Would be Exactly. But when they're not
Jenny Beth Martin (19:50):
And
Chip Brown (19:50):
They're charging 15, 20, 30% or higher for our goods to enter their markets, we're not selling domestic shrimp in Europe. We're not selling domestic shrimp to Asia, but we're importing theirs. And we've either had no tariff or a high tariff, I mean no tariff or a very low tariff of importing those into the United States, the snow level playing field. It's our government not helping our industries to be competitive on a global scale. And I think that we can, one of the ways that we can help industries in the United States is through tariffs. I do support what the president is doing because if you look at what he's doing, punitive tariffs based upon the fact that they have not been equal trading partners with the United States. When you have the European Union not allowing American vehicles to come into the European Union or go to Asia, you might see one Ford or one American car, one Chrysler, but it's all Asian cars because they're not allowing them to come in. And so I support the quality in the trading process, and that's what President Trump is trying to bring to us.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:11):
Right?
Chip Brown (21:12):
Absolutely. But we do need to, on the domestic side, deregulate across the board, bring that down. A lot of the environmental rules are so out of hand and so punitive on our corporations in the United States that they end up really being a detriment to being competitive on a global scale against countries and other parts of the world.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:33):
And Lee Zelin is doing a great job as the EPA administrator taking care and working to deregulate the Environmental Protection Agency. Every week or two, I hear something new, he is done. And I'm just like, yes, keep it up. Keep it up. He's just doing a terrific job. So these are the issues that are most important to you. What do you do when you're not in the State House?
Chip Brown (21:58):
Well, I have a commercial real estate license, so I do investing, and then also my wife and I own some different small businesses. My wife, actually, I'm very proud of my wife. She works for the Army Corps of Engineers and they have three of 'em, one in Mobile, one in Huntsville, and one in Little Rock that run a medical program. And so she's in charge of the one in mobile and they build medical facilities for all branches. Used to just be the Army, but now it's all branches of service all around the world. So they build the hospitals, medical clinics, dental clinics, research labs for the military all around the world. And so she's a patriot. She's the one that is really making a difference.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:44):
That's really good. And then you're going to run for reelection again next year?
Chip Brown (22:49):
I am, yeah. Very good. The election's in May.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:51):
Okay. That's good. Well, I'm so glad to get to meet you today and to learn more about what you're doing and to learn how you're protecting our seafood industry. I love seafood and I appreciate the hard work that the people do to go fish and make sure we've got fresh, not farmed, raised fish. So I appreciate that.
Chip Brown (23:12):
Sure.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:12):
And thank you so much for being out there supporting the Save Act today and for everything you're doing in Alabama to protect elections, but also just to expand liberty in this great state.
Chip Brown (23:23):
Well, thank you. And thank you for what you do too. You're bringing this important issue to the forefront, and it is crucial that we pass the Save Act to the Senate. So thank you for allowing me to come be with you today.
Narrator (23:36):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:56):
If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know, every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications for whichever platform you're listening on. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow, and I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I.