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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
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Barkley looks for another shock
Associate Editor A decade ago third-party candidate Jesse Ventura "shocked the world" by defeating two well-known major party candidates despite lagging behind them in the polls for most of that gubernatorial campaign.
This year Independence Party U.S. Senate candidate Dean Barkley thinks a combination of aversion to partisan advertisements and a high voter turnout could result in lightning striking again.
"I think ... the same thing could happen here," the Plymouth resident said.
He said voter turnout predictions of about 80 percent mean that polls (which estimate he has about 20 percent of the vote) are not dependable.
"Nobody knows what's going to happen now," he said.
Barkley said he's running to give voters a chance to get out of the partisan gridlock that characterizes much of politics - a situation he described as "a perpetual food fight that won't end."
Before Ventura's victory, which was engineered in part by Barkley, the wrestler was polling in the mid-20s. Ventura ended up defeating then Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III and then St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman by garnering 37 percent of the vote.
He called the current clash between Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Democratic challenger Al Franken the most negative campaign in the history of Minnesota.
"It's 10 months of just crud," he said. "If you're tired of how they're handling their campaigns, I'm giving you an option."
Not having a comparable campaign war chest, Barkley expects he'll stick with radio advertisements and not run expensive television ads in the campaign's remaining days.
Barkley, 58, an attorney, who recently was a bus driver of Metro Mobility, was appointed to fill the remainder of late Sen. Paul Wellstone's term after he was killed in a plane crash. He had served as Ventura's director of the Office of Strategic and Long Range Planning Commission. Before managing Ventura's 1998 campaign he ran as a third-party candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1994 and 1996. Although unsuccessful in those bids he won enough votes for his maverick party to earn major party status.
Barkley said he would have reluctantly voted for the financial institution bailout legislation.
"If we hadn't done anything we would have had a market crash," he said.
Tough rules and regulations for Wall Street are needed, Barkley said, including criminal sanctions for CEOs who misrepresent their firm's assets. He also would propose an ethics bill that prohibits members of Congress from accepting donations from any business that's regulated by a committee they sit on.
In order for the economy to bounce back consumers are going to have to shed their bomb shelter mentality, he said - something that will occur only if their faith and confidence in government is restored.
"Our country is broke right now," he said. "We have to start having fiscal discipline. There's a new reality right now. I'm not going to promise anything to people."
Passing the federal government's near $11 trillion debt on to the next two generations is irresponsible.
"We've got to stop the greed, me-first generation," Barkley said.
He said the solutions to the Social Security finances are evident even if they're not politically popular. Some combination of four actions are necessary, he said, in order to save Social Security Those options are:
¥ Raise taxes for Social Security.
¥ Raise the eligibility age.
¥ Alter the income level for who is taxed for Social Security.
¥ Establish means testing in order for people to qualify.
The former U.S. senator, an opponent of the Iraq war, said the U.S. military's budget is greater than the military budgets of all other nations combined. He questioned whether the U.S. can afford to be the world's policeman and whether we could afford to station troops in Germany and Japan.
"If it's a tough message, then don't vote for me," Barkley said. "If I wanted to pander I'd be a Democrat or a Republican."
MIKE O'ROURKE may be reached at mike.orourke@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5860.
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