Barkley spoke for many years of his Republican Party affiliation. In 1995, he considered running as a Republican candidate for Alabama's governorship in the 1998 election. However, in 2006, he altered his political stance, stating "I was a Republican until they lost their minds." At a July 2006 meeting of the Southern Regional Conference of the National School Boards Association in Destin, Florida, Barkley lent credence to the idea of running for Governor of Alabama, stating: I'm serious. I've got to get people to realize that the government is full of it. Republicans and Democrats want to argue over stuff that's not important, like gay marriage or the war in Iraq or illegal immigration... When I run—if I run—we're going to talk about real issues like improving our schools, cleaning up our neighborhoods of drugs and crime and making Alabama a better place for all people.