The Minnesota congressman running against Joe Biden in the Democratic primary dropped out of the race on Wednesday, ending a long-shot bid to stop the US president from winning the nomination. He endorsed the president.
Dean Phillips, who represents a wealthier suburban area outside Minneapolis, entered the Democratic race seemingly against his will and against the advice of most of his Democratic colleagues. The congressman, who first took office in 2019, first tried to recruit more prominent Democrats to challenge Biden, publicly saying Biden needed to let the next generation lead the party.
The announcement comes after he lost his home state of Minnesota, where he gave up a seat he flipped from Republicans in order to enter the presidential race.
“I ran for Congress in 2018 to resist Donald Trump, I was trapped in the Capitol in 2021 because of Donald Trump, and I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again – because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options. But it is clear that alternative is not me,” he said on Twitter/X.
“And it is clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be.”
In his first election test, Phillips nabbed about 20% of the vote in New Hampshire, losing to Biden, whose name was not actually on the ballot.
His campaign in New Hampshire was not without controversy: a former political consultant affiliated with Phillips’s campaign claimed responsibility for a now-infamous robocall in New Hampshire that urged voters not to show up to the polls; Phillips has denounced the robocall.
Since then, Phillips’s momentum has fallen off, but he has stayed in the race – despite having no listed events and little, if any, campaigning happening in the field in any state. Even in his home state of Minnesota, there was no semblance of a campaign – no stops at local diners, no field office, no ground work.
In Michigan, he lost to both an “uncommitted” vote that sought to protest against Biden’s inaction on a ceasefire in Gaza and to Marianne Williamson, the self-help author who had previously suspended her campaign. Williamson, buoyed by the results, made the unusual move to “un-suspend” her campaign.
In mid-February, Phillips announced he had to lay off “a lot” of his staff because he had found it so hard to fundraise with an incumbent in the race. Phillips, the heir to a liquor empire, had previously given his campaign several million dollars to get up and running.
“We can do it,” he said in a video announcing the layoffs. “We can do better. I love you all and thank you for keeping the faith. And join me, the Dean team, we can do it.”
Phillips managed to strike both a self-deprecating earnestness about his own campaign while continually sounding an alarm that Biden cannot win and someone should do something about it – but maybe not him.
“If you resent me for the audacity to challenge Joe Biden, at least you’ll appreciate how relatively strong I’m making him look among primary voters!” Phillips wrote on X, adding a biceps emoji.
He shared an opinion piece endorsing him the headline of which said: Vote for whatshisname. He made a meme of a Dean shoe, a Technicolor joke poking at Trump’s new sneaker. He played the guitar.
He floated the idea of a “unity ticket” with the Republican candidate Nikki Haley, who has stuck in the GOP race despite repeated losses to Trump. He is still trying to goad other Democrats into the race, specifically calling on Democratic governors such as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker to run.
And he has complimented Biden, in a strange way: when a New York Times poll showed Biden trailing Trump and losing support from people who previously voted for him, Phillips cast doubt on the poll.
“When the NYT/Siena poll shows me at 12%, you better believe it is flawed,” he wrote on X. “Only 5% even know who I am.”
