Dean Phillips

By flipping the previously Republican district, he became the first Democrat to win the seat since 1958.

He has since been reelected twice by comfortable margins.

Phillips is a Democrat who has consistently voted in support of President Joe Biden's positions.

Dean Benson Phillips (born January 20, 1969) is an American businessman, politician, and former candidate for the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination who has served as the U.S. representative from MN's 3rd congressional district since 2019.

Phillips's district encompasses the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, such as Bloomington, Minnetonka, Edina, Maple Grove, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie.

A member of the Democratic Party, Phillips has both owned and started several companies in addition to serving as president and CEO of his family's liquor business, the Phillips Distilling Company.

He is the former co-owner of Talenti gelato and co-owns Penny's Coffee.

On November 24, 2023, Phillips announced that he would not run for reelection.

Phillips was born to DeeDee (Cohen) and Artie Pfefer in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1969.

His biological father was killed in the Vietnam War six months after Phillips was born.

In the early 1970s, Phillips moved from Saint Paul to Edina.

He attended The Blake School.

His mother married Eddie Phillips, heir to the Phillips Distilling Company and the son of advice columnist Pauline Phillips (popularly known as Dear Abby), in 1972.

Eddie adopted Dean, who took the last name Phillips.

Phillips graduated from Brown University in 1991 and is a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

He worked for bicycle equipment and apparel company InMotion for two years, and then joined his family's company's corporate office.

He later completed his Master of Business Administration at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management in 2000.

After graduation, he was named the president and CEO of his family's organization, Phillips Distilling Company.

Phillips served as the company's president and CEO from 2000 to 2012.

According to FiveThirtyEight's congressional vote tracker at ABC News, Phillips voted with President Joe Biden's stated public policy positions 100% of the time, making him more liberal than average in the 117th Congress when predictive scoring (district partisanship and voting record) is used.

For the 118th Congress:

He then stepped aside to run one of his other corporate investments, Talenti gelato, until it was sold for an undisclosed amount to Unilever in 2014.

In 2016 he founded Penny's Coffee, a coffeeshop chain he still owns, which has two locations in the Twin Cities metropolitan area as of 2022.

First elected in 2018, Phillips defeated six-term Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen.

With a net worth of $77 million in 2018, Phillips is one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

He unsuccessfully challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination in the 2024 presidential election.

In 2018, Phillips ran for the United States House of Representatives in MN's 3rd congressional district as a Democrat.

In the Democratic primary, he defeated former sales associate Cole Young with 81.6% of the vote.

Phillips won all three counties in the district.

In the general election, Phillips defeated incumbent Republican Erik Paulsen with 55.6% of the vote.

When he took office in 2019, he became the first Democrat to hold this seat since 1961.

During the start of his first term in 2019, the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University placed him 27th out of 435 members in terms of bipartisanship.

On December 20, 2023, Phillips signed on as a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act.

This marked a departure from his earlier position on healthcare; he said that he had previously been "convinced through propaganda that [single-payer healthcare] was a nonsensical leftist notion".

He cited a confluence of factors that shifted his view in favor of Medicare for All, including his experience caring for his daughter who had been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, the financial strain of providing health insurance to his employees as a business owner, and the dynamics of representing a congressional district that includes the headquarters of UnitedHealth Group as well as many residents who struggle to access healthcare.

Phillips ran for reelection in 2020.

He defeated Cole Young in the Democratic primary with 90.7% of the vote and faced off against the Republican nominee, businessman Kendall Qualls.

Phillips defeated Qualls with 55.6% of the vote.

Phillips was unopposed in the Democratic primary.

In the general election, he defeated the Republican nominee, retired U.S. Navy submarine officer Tom Weiler, with 60% of the vote.