Harold H. Barker

Harold Henry Barker was a Minnesota Farmer-Laborite politician, candidate for Governor of Minnesota, and a Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. He was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, in 1930, where he caucused with the Liberal Caucus in the then-nonpartisan body. In 1937, he was elected to serve as speaker, a position he held for two years. His father, H. W. Barker, served in the Wisconsin State Senate.
Barker would become the leader of the newly formed DFL from its creation in 1944. The newly formed party found itself in an ideological struggle between the left-wing and right-wing factions of the party, with Barker leading the left.
In 1946, Barker served as the second gubernatorial candidate after of the merger of the Minnesota Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties into the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, losing to Luther Youngdahl.
Following his electoral defeat and an internal rebellion against him in the YDFL, Barker would lose his position as party secretary in 1949.