Dean Phillips

Dean Benson Phillips ( Pfefer; born January 20, 1969) is an American businessman, politician, and former candidate for the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination who has served as the U.S. representative from MN's 3rd congressional district since 2019. Phillips's district encompasses the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, such as Bloomington, Minnetonka, Edina, Maple Grove, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie. A member of the Democratic Party, Phillips has both owned and started several companies in addition to serving as president and CEO of his family's liquor business, the Phillips Distilling Company. He is the former co-owner of Talenti gelato and co-owns Penny's Coffee. On November 24, 2023, Phillips announced that he would not run for reelection to his congressional seat.

First elected in 2018, Phillips defeated six-term Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen. By flipping the previously Republican district, he became the first Democrat to win the seat since 1958. He has since been reelected twice by comfortable margins. Phillips is a Democrat who has consistently voted in support of President Joe Biden's positions. With a net worth of $77 million in 2018, Phillips is one of the wealthiest members of Congress. He unsuccessfully challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination in the 2024 presidential election. Phillips has received the second-highest number of delegates of any candidate in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries (four).

Early life, education, and career
Phillips was born to DeeDee (Cohen) and Artie Pfefer in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1969. His biological father was killed in the Vietnam War six months after Phillips was born. His mother married Eddie Phillips, heir to the Phillips Distilling Company and the son of advice columnist Pauline Phillips (popularly known as Dear Abby), in 1972. Eddie adopted Dean, who took the last name Phillips. He was raised Jewish.

In the early 1970s, Phillips moved from Saint Paul to Edina. He attended The Blake School.

Phillips graduated from Brown University in 1991 and was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He worked for bicycle equipment and apparel company InMotion for two years, and then joined his family's company's corporate office. He later completed his Master of Business Administration at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management in 2000. After graduation, he was named the president and CEO of his family's organization, Phillips Distilling Company.

Phillips served as the company's president and CEO from 2000 to 2012. He then stepped aside to run one of his other corporate investments, Talenti gelato, until it was sold for an undisclosed amount to Unilever in 2014. In 2016 he founded Penny's Coffee, a coffeeshop chain he still owns, which has two locations in the Twin Cities metropolitan area as of 2022.

2018


In 2018, Phillips ran for the United States House of Representatives in MN's 3rd congressional district as a Democrat. In the Democratic primary, he defeated former sales associate Cole Young with 81.6% of the vote. Phillips won all three counties in the district.

In the general election, Phillips defeated incumbent Republican Erik Paulsen with 55.6% of the vote. When he took office in 2019, he became the first Democrat to hold this seat since 1961.

2020
Phillips ran for reelection in 2020. He defeated Cole Young in the Democratic primary with 90.7% of the vote and faced off against the Republican nominee, businessman Kendall Qualls. Phillips defeated Qualls with 55.6% of the vote.

2022
Phillips was unopposed in the Democratic primary. In the general election, he defeated the Republican nominee, retired U.S. Navy submarine officer Tom Weiler, with 60% of the vote.

Tenure
According to FiveThirtyEight's congressional vote tracker at ABC News, Phillips voted with President Joe Biden's stated public policy positions 100% of the time, making him more liberal than average in the 117th Congress when predictive scoring (district partisanship and voting record) is used. During the start of his first term in 2019, the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University placed him 27th out of 435 members in terms of bipartisanship.

On December 20, 2023, Phillips signed on as a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act. This marked a departure from his earlier position on healthcare; he said that he had previously been "convinced through propaganda that [single-payer healthcare] was a nonsensical leftist notion". He cited a confluence of factors that shifted his view in favor of Medicare for All, including his experience caring for his daughter who had been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, the financial strain of providing health insurance to his employees as a business owner, and the dynamics of representing a congressional district that includes the headquarters of UnitedHealth Group as well as many people who struggle to access healthcare.

Committee assignments
For the 118th Congress:
 * Committee on Foreign Affairs
 * Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (Ranking Member)
 * Committee on Small Business
 * Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access
 * Subcommittee on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Workforce Development

Caucus memberships

 * Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus
 * New Democrat Coalition
 * Problem Solvers Caucus

2024 presidential campaign
In July 2023, Phillips said he was considering challenging President Joe Biden in the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries. In October 2023, he announced that he would step down as co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee because his views on the 2024 presidential race were incongruent with the majority of his caucus. On October 27, in Concord, New Hampshire, he announced a run for the presidency after he officially filed the paperwork with the Federal Election Commission the previous day. Phillips said he would challenge to gain access to the primary ballots of several states where the Democratic Party had excluded him. He accused representatives of the Biden campaign of pressuring liberal media outlets to not platform him.

Phillips received his first endorsement from New Hampshire State Representative Steve Shurtleff, who said his main reason for doing so was Biden allowing the Democratic National Committee to attempt to strip the state of its first-in-the-nation status. Shurtleff said in January 2023 that he would endorse a candidate other than Biden if this occurred. New Hampshire State Representative Tom Schamberg also endorsed Phillips.

Andrew Yang consistently expressed support for Phillips's campaign since soon after its launch, and co-hosted a campaign event with him in New Hampshire on January 18.

In January 2024, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said he supported Phillips's campaign, donating $1 million to his We Deserve Better campaign PAC.

Other notable people who endorsed Phillips are angel investor and podcaster Jason Calacanis, political and corporate strategist Steve Schmidt, and Jeffrey P. Weaver, political strategist and former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders. Newspapers that endorsed Phillips are New Hampshire Union Leader and The Detroit News.

Phillips lost the New Hampshire Democratic primary to Biden, receiving 19.9% of the vote. Biden was a write-in candidate. In the California primary, Phillips received 2.8% of the total votes cast, with 100,284 votes.

On March 6, 2024, Phillips suspended his campaign following Super Tuesday and endorsed Joe Biden.

Phillips has the second-most awarded delegates in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries, with four. In the Ohio Democratic presidential primary, he received three delegates to the Democratic National Convention, meeting the 15% threshold of votes needed to receive a delegate in a congressional district in the state's 2nd, 6th, and 14th districts. In the Nebraska primary, Phillips earned one delegate by receiving the most votes of any candidate in Logan County, with 55.6% of the vote. In the Oklahoma primary, he received a plurality in Cimarron County. In the Missouri primary, he tied with Biden in Clark County.

Despite defeating Phillips, Biden would later withdrawal from the 2024 U.S. Presidential election on 21 July 2024. On the same day, but also shortly before, Biden ended his re-election campaign, Phillips urged Democrats to hold a vote of confidence on Biden in a Wall Street Journal column and Face the Nation interview.

Personal life
Phillips is married and has two daughters from a previous marriage. He is Jewish and was acknowledged by the Minnesota publication The American Jewish World for serving on the board of Temple Israel in Minneapolis.

Phillips's paternal grandmother Pauline Phillips was the author of the advice column "Dear Abby", under the pen name Abigail Van Buren.