In an attempt to unseat President Joe Biden, Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips officially began his presidential campaign on Friday by registering to compete in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire.
Outside the New Hampshire State House in Concord, in front of a small group of admirers, employees, and interested onlookers, Phillips restated his demand for a new generation of Democratic leaders.
“My friends, it’s time for a change,” declared the third-term congressman, who is seeking the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. “And I’m prepared to guide our wonderful country toward a safe and prosperous future.”
Ahead of the general election, Phillips expressed his worry that incumbent Joe Biden would lose to former President Donald Trump. He made this statement in a previous interview while riding his campaign bus in Concord. Phillips labeled Biden a “terrific president.” According to the congressman, he made an effort to persuade additional Democratic contenders to enter the race and to support Biden in passing the baton. He entered the race personally after those failed attempts.
Phillips stated to CNN, “This was not about me.” “But it looks like President Joe Biden is going to lose the next election, and my inability to draw in other candidates and motivate the president to acknowledge that it’s time” makes me feel compelled to serve my nation.
Phillips has been arguing for months that the president’s age and low approval ratings would make him a weak general election candidate. Phillips just resigned from his post as House Democratic leadership owing to internal party dissatisfaction about his suggestions for a Biden alternative. But as he launches his campaign, Democrats are attempting to coalesce around Biden, repel independent contenders who aim to damage the party’s chances and highlight the administration’s achievements to the public. Talk of Phillips running has been characterized by Biden friends as a diversion that would simply draw attention to the president’s shortcomings.
Phillips and his group have stated unequivocally that they intend to present Biden with a significant challenge that extends beyond New Hampshire. Speaking with reporters in Concord on Friday morning, Phillips declared that running for office merely to increase his national profile would be “foolish.”
He questioned, “Why would someone do this and take the arrows, the mean-spiritedness, the aggression, and the sacrifice that this requires if they wanted their name ID to be out there?”
The congressman intends to have more than 119 town halls in the early voting Democratic primary states of New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan, according to Steve Schmidt, a former Republican operative who is currently providing campaign advice to Phillips. Schmidt made this announcement to reporters on Friday.
“You have to win the first race if you want to be the Democratic nominee,” Schmidt stated on Friday. After departing the Republican Party in 2018, Schmidt had previously contributed to the presidential campaigns of late Senator John McCain and former President George W. Bush.
Confronting Biden
Phillips has also started to criticize Biden’s policies. In his inaugural address, he claimed that growing expenses have placed an excessive burden on Americans and suggested that international aid packages backed by the Biden administration for Israel and Ukraine ought to be diverted toward resolving internal problems.
He had earlier in the day commended Trump for his capacity to mobilize voters who feel excluded and declared that one of his main campaign agenda items will be immigration, a sensitive issue for the Biden administration.
“Having visited the southern border twice, I can attest to its inhumanity and lack of security,” Phillips told reporters on Friday. “Those who are seeking refuge should not be treated fairly. It is unfair to our border patrol officers, who have demonstrated incredible compassion and humanity in ways that I wish more people in the United States could witness. And Democrats have denigrated them.
Phillips’s campaign plan is already giving the party problems. Because the state isn’t following the national party’s updated nomination calendar, which demotes its first-in-nation primary status to second, Biden won’t file to compete in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire. Democrats will instead start a write-in presidential campaign.
That effort will be even more crucial now that Phillips has entered the race, as New Hampshire Democrats would prefer to spare Biden from an embarrassing early primary loss. AdImpact data indicates that Phillips has already reserved $50,000 in state ad time this week.
The first campaign ad for Phillips emphasizes his intense concentration on the New Hampshire primary. He talks about his childhood summer vacations to the state in the minute-long clip, where he also defends the state’s long-standing custom of anticipating presidential candidates to participate in retail politics—something Biden will not be doing.
He says, “I adore New Hampshire.” That’s the reason I’m back where we started—as a presidential contender. Where presidential candidates walk through the snow, listen to your problems and dreams, and most importantly, talk about how we’re going to work together to move forward as a nation.
The road ahead for Phillips would be more steeper once he left New Hampshire. Schmidt stated that although Phillips utilized his personal fortune, which is estimated to be in the tens of millions based on his most recent financial disclosure, to help “get the ball rolling” on his campaign, he will not be funding it himself and will instead be depending on modest contributors.
such other Democrats who are anticipated to run for president in the future, such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer or California Governor Gavin Newsom, Phillips is among the first to acknowledge this.
Additionally, he may suffer in the Palmetto State’s contest on February 3 as a result of his decision to concentrate on New Hampshire following the DNC’s attempt to promote South Carolina to the top spot on the primary schedule.
Christale Spain, the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, released a statement saying, “Dean Phillips is failing South Carolina, an important testing ground for presidential candidates.” “We are thrilled to support President Biden as our nominee once more, South Carolina.”
While expressing his excitement for his upcoming trip to South Carolina, Phillips expressed his disappointment that Democrats would imply that campaigning in New Hampshire is “somewhat shameful.”
That’s regrettable, he remarked. “And I believe that to be a sign of the illness of politics, for which I aspire to be the cure.”
Calls for new leadership
Up until recently, Phillips was regarded as a well-mannered moderate. In 2018, he was one of several lawmakers who assisted Democrats in seizing control of the House. As the grandson of the late advice columnist Abigail Van Buren, better known as “Dear Abby,” and the heir of a Minnesota liquor company, Phillips’ first campaign was centered around upholding the Affordable Care Act and addressing dysfunction in the government.
But in the last year, he has emerged as the most notable figure in his party, urging Biden to forego running for reelection and stating that the party needs new leaders to take the reins.
He lost support from his own party as a result of that stance: The caucus’s messaging committee, the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, called Phillips out during a closed-door meeting for not aligning with the party’s position on Biden’s reelection bid. Phillips made the announcement earlier this month that he was resigning from the position.
According to a source, Phillips tried to get in touch with Biden in August, but the president wasn’t available. Rather, the source stated that Phillips had a conversation with White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, who listened to him but also expressed confidence in the president’s ability to win in 2024 and complete the task.
As a courtesy, I tried to let him know about my goals, which at the time were to encourage a new generation of candidates to run for the nomination, Phillips said to CNN. The conversation with Zients, he added, was “brief but friendly.”
The Biden campaign celebrated the party’s “historic, unified support” for the president’s reelection effort in a statement released on Friday.
The campaign is working hard to mobilize the winning coalition that President Biden can bring together in a unique way to defeat the MAGA Republicans in November of next year, according to Biden campaign spokeswoman Kevin Munoz. “The stakes of next year’s election could not be higher for the American people.”
The welcome back home has been chilly. Democratic governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, said in an apparent jab at the Biden campaign on Friday that occasionally people in his state engage in “crazy things,” such as “making political sideshows for themselves,” in an email intended to raise money for the campaign.
The email continued, “One more thing about Minnesota is that we adore Joe Biden and we’re doing everything we can to get him reelected.”
For his suburban Twin Cities seat, Phillips has also garnered Ron Harris, a member of the DNC Executive Committee, as a primary opponent. Prior to Minnesota’s August 13 non-presidential primary, Phillips has until June 4 to register to compete for reelection.)
Phillips claimed to feel “liberated” and freer to talk after stepping down from leadership. He’s been saying for months that although he believes Biden is an excellent president, polls indicate that people are wary of his advanced age and have given him a poor popularity rating for the role.
It’s hard for me to understand how something like what we read, hear, see, or sense can be disregarded. And it all leads to the same conclusion,” Phillips said to CNN upon his resignation as leader. “I fear that we will see another Trump administration if Democrats do not listen now.”
Two-thirds of Democrats indicated in a September CNN poll that they want the party to choose a candidate other than Biden. However, 82% of Democrats stated they didn’t have a particular opponent in mind for the president, while 67% of Democrats said they thought it was very or extremely probable that Biden would be the party’s choice. The largest worry Democrats had about Biden’s 2024 candidacy was his age, according to nearly half of them.
Following Biden’s announcement in April that he would run for reelection, Phillips encouraged other prominent Democrats to initiate primary challenges and made hints that he might run himself. He had meetings with potential bidders in New York in July.
From there, as Phillips approached New Hampshire officials, rumors of a potential 2024 campaign spread. A Dean Phillips for President bus was spotted traveling through Ohio earlier this week, most likely on its way to the Granite State.
In the third quarter of 2023, Biden raised $71 million for both the Democratic Party and his reelection. He is the clear front-runner for the party’s candidacy. A resolution expressing the DNC’s “full and complete support” for Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their reelection in 2024 was unanimously supported by the organization’s members in February.
Historically, incumbents have abstained from primary debates, and this cycle is no exception with none scheduled.
There isn’t much space left for opponents. Another long-shot Democratic contender, author Marianne Williamson, has not improved in the polls since she began her candidacy in March.
Concerns were raised when environmental attorney and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his intention to run as an independent earlier this month, abandoning the Democratic primary in favor of supporting Republicans. In exchange, supporters of the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024, former President Donald Trump, are concerned that the Kennedy campaign may help Biden.
The White House has pointed out that Phillips has often voted with the president in Congress and hasn’t questioned his policy stances.
“We value the congressman’s nearly unwavering backing of this administration as he advances several crucial, significant legislative agenda items for the citizens of the United States,” press secretary for the White House Karine Jean-Pierre said to reporters on Tuesday.