Ben Barnes
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Ben Barnes (born April 17, 1938) is an American lobbyist who was once the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and the lieutenant governor of his state. He was a vice-chair [link] and top fund-raiser of the John Kerry campaign, being one of only eight persons who raised over $500,000 for Kerry [link].
While a student at the University of Texas at Austin, Barnes worked at the Texas State Health Department. After discovering some financial irregularities that led to the indictment of the state health cmmissioner, Barnes became interested in politics, went back to his home area of the state and ran for state representative when he was barely 21 years old and pulled off an upset victory. Advancing quickly through the Texas legislature, by 1963, Barnes was chairman of the powerful Rules Committee. Barnes was recognized as one of the "Ten Outstanding Young Men in America" by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1965. Barnes served as state Speaker of the House in Texas from 1965-1969, U.S. representative to the NATO Conference in 1967, and United Nations Representative to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1968.
Barnes served as lieutenant governor from 1969 until 1973, often called the most powerful position in the Texas state government. In 1971, he was caught up in the political fallout of the Sharpstown scandal, though he stated he had no knowledge of the involvement of several state senators. The scandal contributed to an unsuccessful run for governor and Barnes's exit from public office.
Duing the seventies and eighties Barnes developed a multi-million dollar real estate empire which included the development of such projects as Southwest Parkway and Barton Creek Country Club in Austin. He entered bankruptcy following the collapse of the real estate bubble.
By the late 1990s Barnes had become a millionaire lobbyist working for GTech, a company that operated lotteries in 37 states including Texas. The Texas lottery was losing money, in part because of a lucrative deal in which Barnes received 3.5 cents for every ticket sold – more than $3 million per year. For many years Ben Barnes and the lobbying firm he founded in Austin, the Ben Barnes Group, have made many millions of dollars by acting as the go-between bringing special interest groups and companies together with highly-placed Democrat officeholders. The Center for Responsive Politics has listed Barnes as the third largest all-around Democratic donor in America 1999-2004.
Since leaving elective office, Barnes has become a successful business executive and civic leader. He is the founder of the Ben Barnes Group, a business consulting and lobbying firm. He has served as a consultant, director or chairman of more than two dozen companies, including SBC, American Airlines, Dallas Bank and Trust, Grumman Systems Support Corporation, Laredo National Bank and the Barnes/Connally Partnership.
In 1999, Barnes claimed that while Speaker of the House he had "personally interceded" with Texas Air National Guard officials to get George W. Bush into the Guard [link]. Barnes repeated the claim in the U.S. presidential election, 2004. He stated that he had assisted Bush while Barnes was lieutenant governor. The charge met heavy criticism over its inconsistency (Barnes did not become lieutenant governor until 1969 - after Bush joined the guard) and after his daughter Amy publicly challenged the veracity of his story.
In 1995, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of University of Texas, Austin. In addition to his corporate work, he also serves on the board of several non-profit organizations including the Boys and Girls Club, the national group Patient Privacy Rights, and is vice president of the LBJ Foundation. He and his current wife, Melanie, live in Austin with two daughters that they adopted from Romania and Russia.
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