Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips Launches Bid Against Biden, Files for the New Hampshire Primary

Concord, N.H. — Minnesota Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips on Friday filed for the New Hampshire primary, officially launching his long-shot Democratic presidential candidacy and challenging incumbent President Joe Biden for the nomination.

"I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States of America," Phillips said outside the New Hampshire State House. "It is time for America’s exhausted majority to meet this moment."

With his campaign bus behind him, the crowd around Phillips was small. Many of those in attendance were either family or friends. A number of tourists in New Hampshire for the fall colors - some from Florida, others from California - stopped when they saw Phillips speaking.

"I am running for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States because, my friends, it is time for a change," Dean said, adding that he is not offering himself up in opposition to President Biden, someone he said he appreciated.

He made the case that he is the Democratic candidate in the best position to win the 2024 general election because, as he said, "it’s time for the torch to be passed to a new generation of American leaders."

Phillips has a steep climb ahead of him. He is nationally unknown, is launching the bid mere months before the primary, and is facing an incumbent president with significant resources and the entire party infrastructure behind him.

Phillips filed his candidacy at the Secretary of State’s Office in New Hampshire. On Thursday night he filed his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

The Minnesota congressman will now begin the massive undertaking of trying to rise from anonymity, something his campaign says he will do by focusing on three states — New Hampshire, Michigan, and South Carolina — and by aiming to hold 119 town halls in the coming months.

In a conversation with reporters before he boarded his bus to travel to the Secretary of State’s office on Friday, Phillips cast his endeavor as one focused on defeating former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, next November. Democrats aligned with Biden have said Phillips’ campaign could do the opposite - while he is unlikely to win the Democratic nomination, he may undermine Biden with his focus on the President’s advanced age.

Phillips tried to dispel the idea that his run was a vain attempt to get his name out there, something numerous Democrats have charged.

“If someone wanted to get their name ID out there, why would they do this and take the arrows and the mean-spiritedness and the aggression and the sacrifice that this requires,” he asked in response to The Messenger. “That would be the most foolish thing in the world to do?” 

He added: “This is for one reason and one reason only, Democrats need to win the next election. … We cannot lose the next election… All the data, all the polling indicates that President Biden will not win the next election.”

Steve Schmidt, an anti-Trump, one-time Republican operative, is the top operative on Phillips’ campaign.

He told reporters on Friday that what Phillips is doing is “something beautiful, something restorative,” referring to his focus on New Hampshire, a state that Democrats have decided to move out of their first in the nation primary position in a bid to diversify the party’s nominating process. New Hampshire Democrats have not agreed to comply with that change and, in turn, have been punished by the Democratic National Committee. Because of that, Biden’s campaign informed New Hampshire Democrats this week that he would not be on the ballot in the state’s primary, but party officials have already begun to plan a write-in campaign for the president.

“He is running to win. He is running to win,” Schmidt said. “He is not running to be a spoiler.”

It is unclear how Phillips is planning to fund his presidential campaign. While Biden and Democratic committees supporting him raised $71 million in the third quarter, Phillips only raised $197,720 to his congressional account over the same three months. But Phillips could self-fund a portion of his campaign. The congressman’s birth father, Artie, died in the Vietnam War. His mother later married Eddie Phillips, heir to the Phillips Distilling Company. Before running for Congress, Phillips worked as president and CEO of his family’s distilling company and later as the head of Talenti Gelato before it was sold to Unilever in 2014. He is worth an estimated $64 million.

Schmidt said Friday that Phillips would “put a little in up front to get the ball rolling” but that the campaign intends to be “a small dollar donor campaign.”

The Biden campaign's response to Phillips' announcement: “President Biden is proud of the historic, unified support he has from across the Democratic party for his reelection. The stakes of next year's election could not be higher for the American people, and the campaign is hard at work mobilizing the winning coalition that President Biden can uniquely bring together to once again beat the MAGA Republicans next November.”