Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) announced this week that he was challenging President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary. The move comes after weeks of speculation and represents the most serious challenge to the president within his own party so far.
Phillips wrote on social media that he would base his campaign around four main themes. He said that he would work to “bring down the cost of living and make life affordable.” He said that this could be done by making the country “both pro-business and pro-worker to get there.”
Phillips also wrote that the United States must focus on “safety.”
“If people don’t feel safe in their communities, not much else matters,” he wrote. Phillips cited the current drug and mental health crises in the country.
Furthermore, Biden’s opponent wrote that his campaign will focus on “the generational change the country wants and policies that invest in our future, our young people.”
The last major theme Phillips announced was to have Americans “listening to each other to get back to a less divisive political environment. There’s government reform that will help with this too—we need term limits, campaign finance reform, and things like bipartisan cabinets.”
I am running for President as a Democrat in 2024.
My campaign will be about four main things.
First and foremost, it will be about the economy. We have to make life more affordable for the middle class, which is the issue that voters care about most. We need to bring down the… https://t.co/dNyRtITHzq
— Dean Phillips 🇺🇸 (@deanbphillips) October 27, 2023
Phillips is currently in his third term in Congress. Prior to his time in politics, he co-founded a gelato business.
He said in his campaign launch Thursday that it was “time to put our country back together again.”
In particular, the candidate said that Biden, 80, needed to hand over power to a younger generation of leaders.
Phillips said that he planned to launch his campaign in New Hampshire, which is one of the first presidential nominating contests in the country.
The move came after Biden’s most well-known opponent withdrew from the primary process to run as an independent candidate. Activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., also known as RFK, said that he felt that he was not given fair treatment by the Democratic National Committee.
