Congressman Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, at the American Conservation Coalition’s 2022 Summit on June 16, 2022. Photo by Gage Skidmore

By Jacob Kornbluh October 25, 2023

Jewish Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota plans to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination next year and will launch his campaign on Friday. He has reportedly chosen the same campaign slogan he has used in his runs for Congress and which he has posted outside his Capitol Hill office: “Everyone’s Invited!”

Phillips said he made his decision after after months of encouraging other Democrats to run against 80-year-old Biden, for fear that his age and low approval rating would doom his reelection and give former President Donald Trump a clear shot at the White House.

“I will not sit on the sidelines and be quiet and stand down when I see the writing on the wall,” Phillips, 54, said earlier this month. 

A recent Yahoo-YouGov poll showed that 55 percent of Democratic primary voters want Biden to be the Democratic nominee in 2024.

The congressman has credited his grandmother, the author of the renowned “Dear Abby” advice column, for sowing his interest in Democratic politics when he was a boy.

Phillips is expected to join the race at a time of growing criticism on the left of Biden’s steadfast support of Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza, a stance that has prompted some Muslim American voters in Michigan, a key battleground state, to threaten to sit the election out. Biden has seen his support grow among Jewish Americans, who largely vote Democratic, since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

The White House this week dismissed Phillips’ challenge, noting his close alignment with the president. “When it comes to President Biden’s official work, the administration appreciates that Congressman Phillips has voted for nearly 100% of the president’s legislative agenda,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. 

Rooted in his Jewish heritage 

Since his election in 2018 as the first Jewish Minnesotan in the House of Representatives, Phillips has highlighted his heritage, speaking out against antisemitism and hate. He belongs to the Congressional Jewish Caucus and the Black-Jewish Caucus, a bipartisan initiative established in 2019.

The three-term congressman descends from Jewish refugees who escaped persecution in Eastern Europe. His step-great-grandfather, Jay Phillips, founded Mount Sinai Hospital, the first in the Twin Cities to put Jewish doctors on staff, and played a pivotal role in launching Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. (His biological father, Artie Pfefer, was killed in the Vietnam War when Phillips was 6 months old.) 

His grandmother, Pauline Phillips, authored the “Dear Abby” advice column under the pen name Abigail Van Buren. Phillips said in a 2019 interview that his grandmother first introduced him to Democratic politics when he was 11, as the family watched the returns of the 1980 presidential election.

Outspoken on Israel and antisemitism 

Phillips has aligned himself with the mainstream pro-Israel wing of his party. 

Last year, he was the lead author of a bipartisan letter from about 50 members of Congress urging the Biden administration to defund the United Nations’ investigation of Israel’s actions during its 2012 conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Phillips was also part of a group of members pressing House leadership in 2021 to vote on additional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. 

Phillips also criticized members of “The Squad” over their rhetoric on Israel. He reportedly demanded an apology from Rep. Ilhan Omar, his Democratic colleague from Minnesota, during a private meeting in 2019 for comments she made about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that some considered antisemitic. The exchange led to an “abrupt end” to that gathering. Phillips also called Omar out for her 2021 remarks comparing the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban, and rebuked New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019 for comparing border detention facilities to Nazi concentration camps. 

Similarly, he confronted Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican, for likening vaccination mandates to the Nazi regime last year. 

Last week, Phillips criticized Omar for opposing a military aid package to Israel. He opposed, however, along with other Democrats, House Republicans’ efforts earlier this year to remove her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He called the move “the very weaponization of antisemitism that I, as a Jewish person, find repulsive, I find dangerous, and above all else, shameful.”

Phillips supports a two-state solution in the Middle East for Israelis and Palestinians. Following the Hamas terrorists’ attack on Israel’s southern border on Oct. 7, and as Israel began striking targets in Gaza, the congressman said the U.S. must continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself and remain mindful of “the plight of the Palestinians.”

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