Democratic U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips launches longshot bid for presidency

Democratic U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips has officially launched his longshot bid for the presidency, breaking dramatically from his own party by taking a stand against President Joe Biden's re-election run.

Phillips started the campaign roll-out late Thursday and filed for New Hampshire's presidential primary Friday. He joyfully made his way to his campaign bus Friday morning on one of the most politically consequential days of his career and said "it's time for change. It's time for people with different perspectives, different backgrounds, different political perspectives, to come together."

Not long after, Phillips more directly confronted Biden's status.

"The only person helping Donald Trump right now, I'm afraid, is President Biden, and that is the problem," Phillips told reporters. "He is one of the only Democrats who I believe can lose the next election, and that's why I believe we need competition."

The third-term congressman's presidential ambitions stem from his concern that Democrats need an alternative to Biden in the 2024 primary race amid polling showing warnings for the incumbent.

There's already worry among Democrats that Phillips' run will hurt Biden's chances. Others say they don't see a path for Phillips to win.

"He has no chance of a snowball in hell," said Joe Trippi, who has worked on several presidential campaigns and was Democrat Howard Dean's campaign manager in 2004.

In response to Phillips' launch, Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Biden's re-election campaign, said in an email the president has solid support "from across the Democratic party."

"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," Munoz said.

The likelihood that former President Trump could become the GOP nominee in the 2024 general election raises the stakes even higher for Democrats.

"If you have any conversation of a primary, you will have to communicate why you think the sitting president shouldn't be elected," said Michael Blake, a former Obama White House aide and previous Democratic National Committee vice chair. "So you're creating messaging and creating confusion when we don't need that."

The lonely stand Phillips has taken within his own party has alienated him from allies. And in early October, Phillips confirmed he was leaving his House Democratic leadership post.

Phillips' calls for a Democratic Biden challenger this summer was met with public pushback from allies of the president. Those voices are only expected to grow louder now that Phillips has begun his campaign.

Phillips comes from wealth, estimating his own net worth at around $50 million, and was a businessman before entering politics. He's heir to the Phillips Distilling Co. liquor fortune and helped launch the successful gelato brand Talenti. He said he's loaning his presidential campaign $2 million and will start making small-donor calls to fund the campaign going forward.

The Minnesotan's campaign faced an early mishap. After announcing his presidential run Thursday night on X, the former Twitter, the same account was labeled by the company as suspended early Friday.

Phillips has launched an official website, Dean24.com, in which he describes his campaign as "built on joy and bringing people together." But on social media Friday, Phillips' campaign adviser Steve Schmidt appeared to lash out at Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, insinuating without evidence that she was the source behind an unflattering story published about Phillips on Friday.

"I'm going to use some psychic powers to try to guess the embittered source. Could it be a Category 5 mean girl who eats salad with a comb?" Schmidt posted on X.

Schmidt was referencing a 2019 story about Klobuchar that described a time when the senator reportedly ate a salad with a comb after berating an aide for forgetting utensils.

A spokesperson for Klobuchar responded Friday to Schmidt's claim that she was behind the story about Phillips, calling it "an outright lie."

An uphill climb

Biden would be 82 at the time of a second inauguration. The map for Phillips, 54, to defeat Biden in a primary contest is difficult, if not impossible. While Phillips could try to make a case for generational change, his political differences from Biden are slim to none and the Minnesotan has backed Biden's work as president.

"We appreciate the [congressman's] almost 100 percent support of this president as he's moved forward with some really important key legislative priorities for the American people," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.

Even in the most promising conditions, recent American political history shows that intraparty challenges to sitting presidents end in failure for the challenger.

Phillips has a conceivable path to victory in New Hampshire because Biden has chosen not to appear on the state's primary ballot. Biden strongly supports the Democratic National Committee's reshuffled order of state presidential primaries, which places South Carolina ahead of New Hampshire. And New Hampshire is defying the DNC by seeking to still hold its primary first.

That means the only Democrats on New Hampshire's primary ballot could be Phillips, author Marianne Williamson and other lesser-known candidates. Some Democrats in New Hampshire are expected to soon announce a write-in campaign for Biden.

"I want to speak for the exhausted majority in America. The people who know that we have reached a point where we have got to stop the nonsense," Phillips told reporters as the day began.

Phillips gave a speech in Concord after filing for president in front of a sparse audience. Yet even before he spoke, Phillips had caught the attention of one New Hampshire voter.

"Well I'm going to vote for Phillips in the primary," said Susan Seidner, a 68-year-old retired teacher. "Because Biden is not even registered in our primary."

In addition to South Carolina, the other early state primaries are expected to include Nevada and Michigan. Phillips missed the deadline for the Nevada primary, and South Carolina is the state that essentially resurrected Biden's 2020 presidential primary effort by giving him an overwhelming victory.

"You've got a preview of what to expect of anybody who runs against Biden in South Carolina back in 2020," said influential South Carolina Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, whose support for Biden ahead of that year's state primary was seen as key. "It'll be a repeat."

Running for president does not necessarily prevent Phillips from changing course in the coming months and running instead for re-election to his congressional seat. The filing deadline in Minnesota for Congress isn't until early June. But Minnesota DNC member Ron Harris has already announced a run for Phillips' seat. Harris has also made clear he strongly supports Biden's 2024 campaign.

Fellow Democrats in Congress haven't been shy about pushing back against Phillips as it became clear he was going to enter the presidential race. Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz called Phillips a friend and "tremendous congressman" earlier this month but said that "no one should be primarying Joe Biden."

"We need to be unifying behind Joe Biden to take on Donald Trump, who is an existential threat to the country," said Moskowitz.