Paula Overby
American politician from Minnesota
Paula Mirare Overby (born Paul Overby; February 28, 1954 – October 5, 2022) was an American author, computer technician, gay parent, mental health counselor, minor party, LGBTQ, and cannabis rights leader who died four weeks before Election Day while campaigning as a marijuana party nominee for United States Congress from Minnesota.
Activism career
Democratic Party
Overby, who in 2013 was elected Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party state central committee director, sought the 2014 D–F–L endorsement for United States Representative from Minnesota's 2nd congressional district. Overby withdrew from the Democratic nomination when Mike Obermueller was picked for a second attempt by him to unseat incumbent Representative John Kline, during the District 2 Democratic convention on April 26.
Independence Party
Overby left the Democratic Party in 2014 and was nominated for 2nd District Representative by the Independence Party. Overby's campaign focused on public third party political funding reform, making elections more engaging and more responsive to people's needs.
Independence became a ballot qualified third party when Dean Barkley got more than five percent in the 1994 United States Senate election. Independence remained ballot qualified in Minnesota for two decades, until 2016, when Overby was again Independence Party nominee in District 2, and got 28,869 votes, 7.8 percent.
Green Party and return to DFL
Green Party, which had been a Minnesota major party after Ralph Nader got 5.2% in the 2000 presidential election, became an officially recognized minor party after 2004. Overby was Minnesota Green Party's United States Senate candidate in 2018 by petitioning the state for ballot access, receiving 23,101 votes in the four-way race on November 6.
Returning to the Democratic Party in 2020 and seeking the D–F–L nomination for US Senator, Overby challenged Democratic Senator Tina Smith, who was previously Lieutenant Governor and had been appointed to US Senate by Governor Mark Dayton when Senator Al Franken resigned.
“Paula Overby” enters the record as american politician from Minnesota. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Paula, Overby and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q124219630. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 2022, 2013 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paula Overby” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.