The filing deadline for the U.S. Senate race arrives at 5 p.m. today. Jesse Ventura is almost certainly out. Barring a last-minute appeal directly from God, he told Larry King last night, the man who once called organized religion a "sham and a crutch for weak-minded people" will sit on the sidelines.

Ventura’s political confidant, however, intends to enter the fray. Dean Barkley says he’ll give the former governor until about 3 p.m. to change his mind before heading to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office to file his papers. "I am moving ahead as if he’s not going to have the conversation with God, but if he does it wouldn’t surprise me either," says Barkley, who was appointed to the Senate by Ventura to fill out the final two months of Paul Wellstone’s term in 2002. "I know where the bathrooms are in Washington, so I don’t have to learn that." Barkley will run under the banner of the Independence Party, setting up a potential primary battle with southern Minnesota farmer Stephen Williams, the party’s previously endorsed candidate.

Barkley is not the only candidate to jump into the race at the last minute. Yesterday Priscilla Lord Faris, a personal-injury lawyer and the daughter of former Minnesota Attorney General and federal judge Miles Lord, announced that she will challenge Al Franken in the Democratic primary. "I feel like we need a change in Minnesota in our senator, and I’m not sure that our endorsed candidate is going to be able to do it," Faris told The Associated Press yesterday. "So I want to give it a very good, strong Minnesota try." The neophyte politician claimed that she can raise $1 million to $2 million in a short period of time.

Priscilla FarisFaris’s candidacy presents an unwelcome distraction for Franken as he seeks to oust Sen. Norm Coleman, but could it also spur other Democrats to enter the contest? Attorney Mike Ciresi speculated publicly about the possibility of getting back into the race prior to the state Democratic convention, but has been silent since Franken easily won the party’s backing last month. Calls to Ciresi’s office, as well as to a pair of people who worked on his aborted campaign, were not immediately returned.

Meanwhile two new polls reveal markedly different data for the Senate race. A SurveyUSA poll of 641 registered voters commissioned by KSTP-TV (Channel 5) showed Coleman with a comfortable 13-point lead. However, a Rasmussen Reports poll of 500 likely voters showed Franken with a (statistically insignificant) two-point lead — the first survey in months to find him with an edge on Coleman.

The Secretary of State’s web site currently lists nine candidates for the Senate seat, not counting Barkley or Lord Faris. The roster includes perennial gadfly candidates Dick Franson and Ole Savior, along with fugitive Jack Shepard and a trio of Independence Party contenders.

Barkley believes the climate is ripe for a third-party candidate, as evidenced by Ventura’s strong showing in the polls prior to deciding not to run. He intends to jumpstart his campaign this week by traveling to the state’s secondary media markets (Rochester, Duluth, Mankato) to conduct interviews and organizing a finance committee. "Americans are tired of what our two-party system has been giving us," he says. "They hate both parties right now."