Barry Dion Keene (born July 30, 1938, in Atlantic City, New Jersey) is an American politician from California.
Barry Keene received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University and his law degree from Stanford Law School. He became a member of the California Bar in 1966, and accepted a legal position as a Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney in 1968. In 1968 he won his first election to the Rincon Valley School Board. Two years later he won the Democratic nomination for the 2nd Assembly District which included the counties of Del Norte, Humboldt and Mendocino Counties, Lake County and a portion of Sonoma County. In the 1970 General Election he tried to unseat longtime Republican Assemblyman Frank P. Belotti. However, Keene lost his first race in a narrow election. Keene successfully ran again for the Assembly in 1972 following the death of Assemblyman Belotti.
Keene served six years in the State Assembly holding leadership positions as the chair of the Assembly Elections and Reapportionment Committee and later, as the chairman of the Assembly Health Committee. In 1979 Keene was urged to consider running for an open vacancy in the State Senate. The district included the 2nd Assembly District and all of Marin County, spanning over one-third of the entire California coastline, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border. Keene won the election in 1979 and served in several powerful positions in the State Senate until his resignation in 1993. By resigning immediately after the 1992 general elections, Keene forced taxpayers to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an otherwise unnecessary special election. While in the Senate, Keene held the Chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and later served as the California Senate Majority Leader. During his political tenure, Keene worked on:
What's the point
You won't be there
Fortunately no one cares
You despise
You despair
Why don't you get angry
Don't you care
What do you think I came here for
I just wanted to see
What do you think I'm looking for
I don't want to believe
You already knew it
You already knew it
It takes too long
It's not enough
There's nothing left
And now he's gone again
He's gone again
What do you think I came here for
I just wanted to see
What do you think I'm looking for