DEAN BARKLEY

Dean Barkley is a Minnesota attorney who became the only sitting Independent member of the United States Senate in 2002, when he was appointed by Governor Jesse Ventura to serve out the late Senator Paul Wellstone’s term.

Senator Barkley became politically active in 1992, when he ran for Congress in Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District as an independent. After the 1992 election, Barkley helped form and lead Minnesota’s Independence party.

He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1994 and received more than five percent of the statewide vote, qualifying the Independence Party as a major political party in Minnesota. In 1996, after merging the Independence Party with the national Reform Party, he ran for the U.S. Senate and received seven percent of the vote, making the Reform Party a major party in Minnesota.

Senator Barkley was also instrumental in recruiting former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm to challenge Ross Perot for the Reform Party presidential nomination in 1996.

In the fall of 1997, Senator Barkley was a major strategist and chair for Jesse Ventura’s successful third-party run for Governor. Along with former Democratic Congressman and future Independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Penny, he helped form the Ventura Administration by recruiting key members of the new administration. He then served as a key political advisor to the governor and as Director of the Office of Strategic and Long Range Planning for the State of Minnesota.

In January of 2000, Governor Ventura and Senator Barkley led the movement of the Minnesota Reform Party out of the National Reform Party after Ross Perot and Russell Verney recruited Pat Buchanan to run as the party’s presidential candidate. In doing so, they returned the party to its original name, the Independence Party.

Senator Barkley was also the campaign director for Kinky Friedman’s independent bid for governor of Texas in 2006.

In addition to his government work, Senator Barkley has served as a board member of Common Cause and the Minnesota Compact, which advocates for clean and open elections and campaign finance reform.

Senator Barkley teamed with DHOB partner Tom D’Amore in putting together former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm’s candidacy to challenge Ross Perot’s Reform Party presidential nomination in 1996. He has worked with DHOB partner Bill Hillsman on Governor Ventura’s campaign and on independent Arianna Huffington’s campaign for governor in California. Most recently, he teamed with DHOB partners Laureen Oliver and Bill Hillsman on Kinky Friedman’s independent gubernatorial campaign in Texas.