1. Dean Benson Phillips is an American politician, businessman, philanthropist, and former presidential candidate who served from 2019 to 2025 as the US representative for.
67 Facts About Dean Phillips
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Dean Phillips was first elected in 2018, defeating six-term Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen.
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Dean Phillips became the first Democrat to win the seat since 1958, and was reelected twice by comfortable margins.
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In November 2023, Dean Phillips announced that he would not run for another House term.
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Dean Phillips received four delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, the second-most of any candidate in the primaries, making him the runner-up to Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination.
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Dean Phillips was born to DeeDee and Artie Pfefer in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1969.
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Dean Phillips's father was killed in the Vietnam War six months after Phillips was born, making him a Gold Star Son.
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Dean Phillips's mother married Eddie Phillips, heir to the Phillips Distilling Company and the son of advice columnist Pauline Phillips, in 1972.
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Dean Phillips attended Brown University, where he served as consul of the Sigma Chi fraternity, Beta Nu chapter.
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Dean Phillips worked for bicycle equipment startup InMotion for two years before joining his family's business Dean Phillips Distilling Company, where he served in multiple positions in rectifying, production, sales, and marketing management.
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Dean Phillips completed his Master of Business Administration at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management in 2000, after which he was named president and CEO of the Company.
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Dean Phillips served on the board at Allina Health, one of Minnesota's largest nonprofit health care systems, from 2005 to 2011, and as chairman from 2009 to 2011.
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Dean Phillips chaired the board of the Dean Phillips Family Foundation, his family's charitable work foundation.
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Dean Phillips saw Phillips as a "rising star" in the party.
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Dean Phillips used a pontoon boat to campaign on Lake Minnetonka.
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In 2018, Dean Phillips ran for the United States House of Representatives in as a Democrat.
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Dean Phillips voted in favor of Biden's major economic agenda items, including the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the CHIPS and Science Act.
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In 2021, Dean Phillips received the Bipartisan Policy Center's Bipartisan Legislative Action Award.
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Dean Phillips authored five provisions in the For the People Act, an anti-corruption and voting rights reform bill that passed the House in March 2021.
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Dean Phillips played for the Democrats' team in the 2021 Congressional Baseball Game at Nationals Park.
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Dean Phillips has expressed pride that he is the only member of Congress to have refused all money from lobbyists, special interest groups, and Political Action Committees, and not to have his own leadership Political Action Committee.
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On June 21,2023, Dean Phillips sponsored the Allergen Disclosure In Non-Food Articles Act, which would require drug labels to identify ingredients that contain, or are derived from, major food allergens or gluten-containing grains on par with labeling standards for food products.
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On December 16,2024, Dean Phillips delivered his farewell address on the House floor.
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On May 10,2022, Dean Phillips received an A+ on End Citizens United's anti-corruption and voting rights scorecard for "rejecting corporate PAC money and supporting once-in-a-generation anti-corruption and voting rights legislation".
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Dean Phillips championed cannabis reform bills like the MORE Act and the SAFE Banking Act.
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Dean Phillips co-sponsored the TRUST in Congress Act, which would require lawmakers, their spouses, and dependent children to place their assets in a blind trust from their first day in office until 180 days after they leave office.
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On December 20,2023, Dean Phillips co-sponsored the Medicare for All Act.
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Dean Phillips 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.
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Dean Phillips co-sponsored the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act, giving Liberians a pathway to citizenship, which Trump signed into law.
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On March 5,2022, Dean Phillips was among the lawmakers who met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about providing additional help to Ukraine in fending off Russia's invasion.
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Dean Phillips was among the US delegation that attended the 2022 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
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Dean Phillips sponsored the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act of 2020, which President Donald Trump signed into law.
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On March 5,2020, Dean Phillips received an endorsement from Brady: United Against Gun Violence for working across party lines to pass gun violence prevention bills.
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Dean Phillips voted to mandate background checks on every firearm sale, including sales online and at gun shows, and has said that red-flag laws "work".
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Dean Phillips sponsored the Pathways to Policing Act to provide $50 million to the Department of Justice and local communities to enhance officer recruitment efforts.
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On July 10,2023, Dean Phillips co-led the bicameral IDEA Full Funding Act in the House of Representatives.
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Dean Phillips has advocated for an 18-year term limit in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.
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In July 2022, Dean Phillips became the first Democratic member of Congress to say President Biden should not run for reelection and called for "generational change", pointing to Biden's age.
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In July 2023, Dean Phillips said he was considering challenging Biden in the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries.
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Dean Phillips said that he found both the city of Washington DC and the reluctance of his fellow Democrats to call on Biden not to run again to be distastefully insular and partisan.
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On October 27,2023, in Concord, New Hampshire, Dean Phillips announced his candidacy for president after filing the paperwork with the Federal Election Commission the previous day.
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Dean Phillips campaigned as a younger alternative who would be a stronger opponent to Donald Trump.
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On November 3,2023, Dean Phillips appeared on an episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher".
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Host Bill Maher lauded Dean Phillips but stopped short of a full endorsement.
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Dean Phillips said he would try to gain access to the primary ballots in several states where the Democratic Party had excluded him.
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Dean Phillips accused Biden campaign representatives of pressuring liberal media outlets into blackballing and not platforming him.
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The New York Times reported that during his campaign, Dean Phillips found himself deplatformed, taken off the ballot in some states and rarely invited on television to make his case.
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Dean Phillips called the DNC's ruling that New Hampshire's presidential primary was "meaningless" and that no New Hampshire delegates would be counted at the convention "one of the most egregious affronts to democracy that I've ever seen in my entire lifetime".
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Dean Phillips insisted throughout his campaign that the Democratic Party was "delusional" to believe Biden could beat Trump in a rematch.
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An argument and central critique of Dean Phillips's campaign was that if Democrats created room for a competitive primary against the unpopular sitting president, voters would have a chance to hear other points of view.
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Dean Phillips argued that the Democratic establishment was choking off his challenge because it couldn't accept that "Biden is going to get creamed".
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Dean Phillips said that in his first 100 days as president, he intended to build "the most extraordinary bipartisan cabinet in American history".
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Dean Phillips received his first endorsement from New Hampshire State Representative Steve Shurtleff, who said his main reason for doing so was that Biden allowed the Democratic National Committee to attempt to strip New Hampshire of its first-in-the-nation status.
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In January 2024, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said he supported Dean Phillips's campaign, donating $1 million to his We Deserve Better campaign PAC.
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On January 8,2024, Dean Phillips participated in a debate with Marianne Williamson hosted by New England College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
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On February 4,2024, after his loss in the South Carolina primary, Dean Phillips vowed to remain in the race as "a mission of principle".
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Dean Phillips said the two "had a wonderful conversation" that ended in an invitation to discuss the state of the 2024 race at the White House.
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Dean Phillips had the second-most awarded pledged delegates of any candidate in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries, with four, and received 529,486 votes.
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Dean Phillips said he was surprised by the strength of the nation's two-party system, a "duopoly" that has "a decreasing focus on the country and an increasing focus on winning".
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Dean Phillips expressed disappointment that Biden had not dropped out far earlier and said that "vindication has never felt so unfulfilling".
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On July 22,2024, the day after Biden withdrew, Dean Phillips backed eventual Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris but proposed a straw poll of delegates ahead of the Democratic National Convention to determine the party's top four presidential contenders, who would then take part in four town halls outlining their platforms.
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Dean Phillips explained his reasoning for running against Biden in an August 20 interview at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, saying that he had argued as early as July 2022 that Biden should "pass the torch"; after Biden withdrew in July 2024, some of his colleagues understood why he ran.
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On January 7,2025, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote that Dean Phillips should be nominated for a Profile in Courage Award because it was left to him to "play the part of the boy who says the emperor has no clothes".
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Dean Phillips is Jewish, and was acknowledged by the Minnesota publication The American Jewish World for serving on the board of Temple Israel in Minneapolis.
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Dean Phillips met and befriended Harrelson when Harrelson rented his house while shooting the movie Wilson.
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The trip to Vietnam gained more attention during a stop in Seoul, South Korea, when Dean Phillips ran into a group of K-Pop stars from BigBang and BLACKPINK and a popular South Korean actor, Park Bo-gum, at a recording studio.
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Dean Phillips has said that Elie Wiesel's book Night has stuck with him and that he kept it on his table in Washington and at home.