Dean Phillips launches 2024 White House bid in challenge to Biden

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) launched his presidential campaign on Friday, speaking in New Hampshire after filing for candidacy, encouraging President Joe Biden to pass the torch “to a new generation of American leaders.”

Philips, 54, is relatively unknown on a national scale, and will face an uphill battle by launching a bid months before the primary while the Democratic Party throws its full support behind Biden. He unseated five-term Republican Erik Paulsen in 2018 flipping the House seat blue in a an expensive race.

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Phillips touted himself as a candidate who can resolve the issues within the party that Democrats tend to shy away from by focusing on the high costs of living, the border crisis, growing crime rates, and substance abuse.

“A majority of our neighbors live paycheck to paycheck … unable to get ahead and save for their dreams,” Phillips said. “Life is simply unaffordable. Corporations and the well off, including me, enjoy more favorable tax treatment than working families.”

The Minnesota Democrat has pushed for more tax relief for the middle class despite being one of the wealthiest members of the House of Representatives, with his net worth estimated to be over $120 million. He has had executive roles in the food and beverage industry, founding Penny’s Coffee in 2015 — an upscale coffee shop with two locations in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and served as CEO of Phillips Distilling Company prior.

Speaking to the availability of mental health care and rates of suicide, Phillips indicated he’ll will focus on closing the gap of health disparities.

“America has no healthcare, only sick care,” Phillips said. “We have no mental health system, only a system of greed and corruption.”

“Prices are too high, healthcare and medicine too expensive, and diseases of despair are claiming our children through addiction and suicide,” Phillips added.

Intraparty fighting has increased in recent months as blue cities face the strain of migrants who are exhausting resources. Phillips addressed the border crisis, a topic Democrats tend to steer clear of to show support for Biden’s border policies.

“Chaos at our border and in our cities is growing, while our commitment to countering it is receding,” Phillips said. “We’ve spent billions sending our soldiers to fight in foreign lands and still, and still we haven’t fixed the failures in Flint.”

Phillips addressed the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday evening that left at least 18 people dead as police search for the shooting suspect Robert Card.

“I call on gun owners, I call on activists, I call on the exhausted majority to come together to save American lives,” Phillips said.

The Democratic congressman was once a strong supporter of Biden, but has been a staunch critic of his reelection bid in recent months. Phillips has voted for a majority of the president’s legislative agenda and maintains he is not in opposition to Biden, but rather wants to see a new generation hold power.

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“I have been a Democrat since I was 11 years old, and I believe deeply in the Democratic Party of today — for we believe, in the words of my hero Hubert Humphrey, that the moral test of government is how it treats those in the dawn of life, in the dusk of life, and in the shadows of life,” Phillips said.

“I am a Democrat because I believe in America,” Phillips said. “I believe in the American people and I believe it is time to walk from the shadows of darkness into the bright sunshine of the future right here.”