Independence Party candidate for U.S. Senate Dean Barkley said he is trying to give voters a chance to vote for who they want, not who they are told to vote for.

Barkley seeks the Senate seat now held by Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. The DFL candidate is Al Franken.

Recent polls suggest that Barkley would get 18 percent of the vote if the election were held today. Barkley attended a luncheon campaign gathering at the Albert Lea American Legion Club Tuesday.

“I am trying to present an option for change,” Barkley said.

His recent rise in the polls comes as no surprise to him. He said he feels he is gaining ground at the expense of the incumbent.

“I feel that I have demystified Norm Coleman for the people of Minnesota,” he said.

Barkley said he is aiming at the exurbs, the area stretching from 30 to 120 miles from the Twin Cities. He believes many former Coleman supporters are ready for a change.

“It is no surprise that Norm doesn’t understand the economy. He has never worked in the private sector in his life,” Barkley said.

He criticized his GOP opponent for refusing to support limits on earmarks in public spending bills and talked about restoring public faith in government.

Derek Nelson is the Independence Party chairman for District 27A and liked what he heard from Barkley. Nelson is looking for change in the 2008 senatorial election, and thinks he has found it in Barkley.

“I’m hearing a lot of buzz about Dean’s candidacy. I think people can come together for him because he is a good leader,” Nelson said.

He said he hopes a strong third-party showing in this year’s Senate race will help move Minnesota in a different direction. Nelson said he has been voting for 20 years and has seen little change from politics as usual.

Barkley said he thinks the financial bailout is showing signs of helping to ease the current credit crunch but wants to promote legislation to prevent a recurrence of the country’s economic problems.

“The Sarbanes-Oxley bill was passed after the Enron scandal, and I think we need something similar here,” Barkley said.

He recommends stiff penalties for financial executives who are caught lying to the public and government regulators. Restoring confidence in the financial system was cited by Barkley as a key element in the nation’s economic recovery.

The credit crunch has squeezed many students and their parents as they try to finance college expenses, and Barkley said he feels their pain.

“We have two kids in college so we know what they are going through,” he said.

Fierce criticism of his opponents was a feature of Barkley’s address to supporters. He lambasted Franken as a New Yorker who has flown into Minnesota as a savior of the middle class. But his sharpest jibes were directed at Coleman, whose recent change in campaign tactics drew sharp fire from Barkley.

Endless negative ads having ricocheted against him, Barkley said. Now his opponent has adopted a softer tone.

“Norm has gotten all soft and gooey here lately, but that’s just a sign that my campaign has taken hold among his supporters and he knows he’s in trouble,” Barkley said.

Blasting Coleman for having no core values, he criticized his Republican opponent for being a symbol of all that is wrong with Washington’s elite power brokers.

“Norm Coleman took $3 million from bankers, so how can he be expected to regulate them?” Barkley asked.

Barkley said he hopes to help lead the country in a new direction if elected to the Senate, where he served briefly, filling out the term of the late DFL Sen. Paul Wellstone in 2002. He recommends federal vouchers given to voters who could then split the voucher funds among candidates of their choice. Congress should impose spending limits on itself, involving no new spending unless the funds come from other programs already budgeted.

“Congress needs to accept a new reality,” Barkley said. “Maybe I’m a Don Quixote tilting my lance against windmills, but we cannot keep spending money we do not have.”

Putting Social Security on a sound financial footing and cutting military spending are other priorities for Barkley as he crisscrosses the Gopher state in his uphill battle for office.

“Ever since the end of the Cold War, I have been waiting for a peace dividend, but I have not seen it yet. Do we really need a defense budget that is bigger than all other nations in the world combined?”

Barkley would support ending the long war in Iraq and refocusing the nation’s military energies elsewhere.

“We need to fight the terrorists where they are, and that’s in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”