Dean Malcolm Barkley is an American attorney and politician who briefly served as a United States Senator from Minnesota from 2002 to 2003 as a member of the Independence Party of Minnesota. The founder and chair of the Minnesota Reform Party, he was the chairman of Jesse Ventura's successful upset bid for governor of Minnesota in 1998. Ventura subsequently appointed him director of the state's Office of Strategic and Long Range Planning. After Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash just weeks before the 2002 election, Ventura appointed Barkley to fill Wellstone's Senate seat. His brief tenure ended when Republican Norm Coleman was elected and sworn in to fill the seat.

Paul David Wellstone was an American academic, author, and politician who represented Minnesota in the United States Senate from 1991 until he was killed in a plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota, in 2002. A member of the Democratic Party (DFL), Wellstone was a leader of the populist and progressive wings of the party.