Dean Benson Phillips (born January 20, 1969) is an American businessman and politician who has served as the U.S. Representative from

Minnesota's 3rd congressional district Minnesota's 3rd congressional district encompasses the suburbs of Hennepin, Carver, and Anoka counties to the west, south, and north of Minneapolis. The district, which is mostly suburban in character, includes a few farming communities on ...

since 2019. The district encompasses the western suburbs of the

Twin Cities Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in sta ...

, such as Bloomington, Minnetonka,

Edina EDINA is a centre for digital expertise, based at the University of Edinburgh as a division of the Information Services Group. Services EDINA front-end services (those accessed directly by the user) are available free at the point of use fo ...

, Maple Grove,

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to ...

, and

Eden Prairie Eden Prairie is a city southwest of downtown Minneapolis in Hennepin County and the 16th-largest city in the State of Minnesota, United States. As of the 2020 census, it has a population of 64,198. The city is adjacent to the north bank of th ...

. Phillips is 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 Phillips Distilling Company is a beverage manufacturer and distributor based in Princeton, Minnesota, USA. A family-owned corporation, it produces a variety of alcoholic drink products. At one point it was the largest liquor distributor in the ...

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

2018 File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...

, Phillips defeated six-term Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen. By flipping the once staunchly Republican district, he became the first Democrat to win the seat since

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...

. He has since been reelected twice. Phillips is considered a centrist and a moderate Democrat. Working alongside Republicans on multiple issues, he has been consistently ranked as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress. Phillips advocates for

fiscal responsibility A balanced budget (particularly that of a government) is a budget in which revenues are equal to expenditures. Thus, neither a budget deficit nor a budget surplus exists (the accounts "balance"). More generally, it is a budget that has no budget ...

, public safety, environmental protection, and healthcare reform. With a net worth of $77 million in 2018, Phillips is one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Early life, education, and career

Phillips was born to DeeDee (Cohen) and Artie Pfefer in

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center ...

, in 1969. Artie was killed in the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

when Dean was six months old. DeeDee later married Eddie Phillips, heir to the Phillips Distilling Company and the son of advice columnist Pauline Phillips. In the early 1970s, Phillips moved from Saint Paul to

Edina, Minnesota Edina ( ) is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States and a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis. The population was 53,494 at the 2020 census, making it the 18th most populous city in Minnesota. Edina began as a small farming and mi ...

. He attended The Blake School, where he played on the hockey and baseball teams. Phillips graduated from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

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 A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

's Carlson School of Management in 2000. After graduation, he was named the president and CEO of his family's organization, Phillips Distilling. Phillips served as the company's president and CEO from 2000 to 2012. He then stepped aside to run one of his other corporate investments, Talenti gelato, until it was sold for an undisclosed amount to

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...

in 2014. Since 2016, he has been the founder and owner of Penny's Coffee, a coffeeshop chain with two locations in the

Minneapolis–Saint Paul Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a metropolitan area in the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States centered around the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi, Minnesota River, Minnesota and St. Croix River (Wisconsin–Minnesota) ...

metropolitan area as of 2022.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2018

In 2018, Phillips ran for the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...

in 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.

2020

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.

2022

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.

Tenure

According to '' FiveThirtyEight''s congressional vote tracker at

ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast '' ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include morning news-talk show '' Good Morning America'', '' ...

, Phillips voted with President Joe Biden's stated

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public ...

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. During the start of his first term in 2019, the McCourt School of Public Policy at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise eleven undergraduate and graduate ...

placed him 27th out of 435 members in terms of bipartisanship.

Committee assignments

* Committee on Financial Services ** Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion ** Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations * Committee on Foreign Affairs ** Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations ** Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security and Trade * House Committee on Ethics * Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress

Caucus memberships

* Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus * New Democrat Coalition *

Problem Solvers Caucus The Problem Solvers Caucus is a bipartisan group in the United States House of Representatives that includes members equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, who seek to foster bipartisan cooperation on key policy issues. The group was c ...

Electoral history

Personal life

Phillips is married and has two daughters from a previous marriage. He is

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

and was acknowledged by the Minnesota publication ''The American Jewish World'' for serving on the board of Temple Israel in Minneapolis. Phillips's paternal grandmother Pauline Phillips was the author of the advice column " Dear Abby," under the pen name

Abigail Van Buren Dear Abby is an American advice column founded in 1956 by Pauline Phillips under the pen name "Abigail Van Buren" and carried on today by her daughter, Jeanne Phillips, who now owns the legal rights to the pen name. History According to Pauline ...

References

External links

Congressman Dean Phillips
official U.S. House website
Campaign website
* , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Phillips, Dean 1969 births Brown University alumni Businesspeople from Saint Paul, Minnesota Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota Jewish members of the United States House of Representatives Living people Politicians from Saint Paul, Minnesota Carlson School of Management alumni 21st-century American Jews