Dean Phillips


Dean Benson Phillips is an American businessman and politician from the state of Minnesota. A Democrat, he is the member of the US House of Representatives from Minnesota's 3rd congressional district, having defeated Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen in the 2018 midterm election. The district is located in the western portion of the Twin Cities metropolitan area and includes Bloomington, Eden Prairie, Edina, Minnetonka, Maple Grove, Plymouth and Wayzata.

Early life, education, and career

Phillips was born to DeeDee and Artie Pfefer in 1969. Artie was killed in the Vietnam War when Dean was six months old. DeeDee later married Eddie Phillips, heir to the Phillips Distilling Company and son of Pauline 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, then joined the family company. He completed his Master of Business Administration from the University of Minnesota in 2000, and was named president of Phillips Distilling. He lives in Deephaven, west of Minneapolis.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

In the 2018 elections, Phillips ran for the United States House of Representatives in. In the Democratic primary Phillips ran against former sales associate Cole Young, and received 81.6% of the vote. Phillips won all 3 counties in the district.
Phillips won the race, defeating 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.

Tenure

According to the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, Phillips held a Bipartisan Index Score of 1.1 in the 116th United States Congress for 2019, which placed him 27th out of 435 members. Based on FiveThirtyEight's congressional vote tracker at ABC News, Phillips voted with Donald Trump's stated public policy positions 5.5% of the time, which ranked him average in the 116th United States Congress when predictive scoring is used.

Committee assignments

Personal life

Phillips is married and has two daughters from a previous marriage. Phillips is Jewish and was acknowledged by 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.