CULLMAN, Ala. – Rep. Corey Harbison, R-Good Hope, who represents District 12, said he will be resigning his seat by April 15.
Harbison said he has a few grants he’s promised to assist with before he leaves.
“I want to make sure that I get these groups the money I promised to get them,” Harbison said. “I will get a date soon, but for sure no later than April 15. A law was passed several years ago that did away with special elections after a certain point in the term. That is coming up on us this summer, so I wanted to make sure to leave plenty of time. If I passed the date, we would not have a representative for over a year.”
Harbison said he plans to stay around Cullman County to be close to family and continue to work for the City of Good Hope.
“I know there are whispers that I may run for sheriff,” Harbison said. “The office accounts for over half of the County’s budgeted expenditures. There are a lot of employees who work there, too. I think that someone could have 25 years’ experience working as a deputy, but be clueless about being sheriff and actually running something of that magnitude. This definitely isn’t a campaign pitch because I really have no clue if I am going to run. I’ve just had a lot of people asking about it so I wanted to address it. I do appreciate all of the support and encouragement from everyone. It’s a year away so I have plenty of time to think about it.”
Harbison said he is not committed to running for any office at this time.
“I was elected mayor (of Good Hope) at 22 and served there for six years,” he said. “I was elected to the House and resigned the mayor’s seat to serve in the House, and I’ve been there for 11 years. I didn’t have any children when I was first elected which allowed me to have unlimited time to work whatever hours. When we had our first child, Hance, I had just started my second term. He and my wife would come stay in Montgomery with me during the sessions so I got to be with them every night.”
Harbison shared he and his wife did in vitro again as he was starting this current term.
“Hance started school the next year so that was the end of them being able to stay with me,” he said. “My wife gave birth to our third child, Corley, which was an unexpected pregnancy, just as Hance was starting school. So that put her at home with three children with two of them being babies. Both of the babies were born five weeks premature.”
Harbison’s second child, Rowan, spent the first two weeks of his life in St Vincent’s NICU.
“He was born with a small hole in his heart and it gave complications,” Harbison said. “He’s good and healthy now, but will probably have an operation this fall to close the hole.
We had two stays in Children’s NICU with Corley. She had RSV and she was deathly sick. While dealing with that, they found that her diaphragm is unlevel so it’s pressed up against her lung and that is what made her case of RSV so severe. The lung that the diaphragm is pressed against didn’t have the space to grow like it should have. So, we had those complications and they are more than likely going to have to have an operation to try to correct that. Both experiences changed my perspective on a lot of things.”
Harbison’s oldest child plays some type of ball year-round and he shared that he wants to remain heavily involved.
“I don’t think that a father should be away from their children,” Harbison said. “I’ve always said I want to be called Corey. I don’t like titles. I don’t like to be called representative and didn’t like to be called mayor. When I’m dead and gone, the only title that I care about being remembered as is daddy and I plan to be the best one I can be. I can’t say what future office I may run for because I really don’t know, but if I do ever run for anything, it will be something here at home in Cullman County, Alabama.”
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