Harris was born November 16, 1972. His father, Richard Michael Settainte Harris, is a physician for the Kiowa people. His parents split while he was still young, and he settled with his mother, Deborah Jill in Arizona, where she remarried and renamed him Jason Sam Barnes after his stepfather. In the early 1990s, Barnes married Jennifer Friend, with whom he has five children. After learning about his name change early in life, Barnes decided to adopt his birth name and permanently moved to Oklahoma, where he currently resides. His wife and children changed their names as well. Harris has worked as an air traffic control platoon leader and officer the Army National Guard since 1989 and opened two gaming stores in Gilbert, Arizona, which closed in 2001, a fact Harris attributes to the post-9/11 recession. As a result, he was forced to file for bankruptcy, which was cleared by 2004. Harris has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Oklahoma, and has studied law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
Political career
2010 US congressional campaign
The Republican Liberty Caucus endorsed Harris in his 2010 campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. In that race, he received 9,592 votes for 22.7% of the vote in the Republican primary against incumbent U.S. Representative Tom Cole, who won the nomination.
In August 2011, Harris announced his candidacy for the nomination of the Libertarian Party for President of the United States in the 2012 election. He ended his presidential campaign in April 2012, citing a lack of sufficient fundraising as well as his decision to run for Congress again in 2012.
2012 US congressional campaign
On April 11, 2012, the same day he withdrew his candidacy for the LP presidential nomination, Harris announced that he would make a second bid for Oklahoma's 4th District Congressional Seat in the 2012 Congressional election, again challenging incumbent Tom Cole. Harris ran as an independent in this race. He received approximately 4.5% of the vote and placed third in the vote total behind Cole, who won re-election, and the Democratic nominee Donna Bebo.
2014 OK gubernatorial campaign
On August 3, 2013, Harris announced his intent to run for the Oklahoma governor as the Democratic candidate in the 2014 Oklahoma gubernatorial election. Prior to this announcement, the Democratic Party had yet to field a competitor to incumbent governor Mary Fallin.
Withdrawal
On January 14, 2014, Harris announced that he was officially ending his campaign. He then endorsed the candidacy of Oklahoma RepresentativeJoe Dorman in the gubernatorial race.
