Dean Phillips, the congressman challenging Biden in the Democratic primaries

Besides losing the election, the last thing a candidate wants is to organize a campaign event and not have a single voter show up. That happened to Dean Phillips recently in Manchester, New Hampshire. Only members of his staff and a few journalists were there. “Sometimes, if you organize it, they don’t come,” he said with a resigned smile. This Sunday, by contrast, Phillips pulled double-duty in Hampton and Rochester, where he managed to fill the two modest venues where he held events to the brim with supporters. Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, is the only relevant politician in the Democratic Party who has dared to challenge sitting President Joe Biden in the primaries.

In Hampton, he gathered nearly 200 people in a room at the Old Salt Restaurant. The day was clear, but with temperatures below freezing. Phillips arrived with his wife and began by joking, “We’re from Minnesota, it’s a little warm for us, actually.”

“Y’all ready for some change? Yeah, well, I am too,” he said. “It’s not that easy running against your party and your incumbent president and a man I respect. But I gotta tell you the last 90 days, you have made me feel so warm,” he added. “So, welcome, not just Democrats and independents, [but also] Republicans,” he said, pointing out that Americans are not as divided as they are made out to be.

Phillips appears on the New Hampshire Democratic ballot along with a self-help book writer, a long-bearded comedian who wears a rubber boot for a hat, and a president by name but with no office (President R. Boddie). Missing, because of a Democratic Party dispute over the timing of the primaries, is Biden himself, although citizens can vote for him by writing his name in a blank box.

A millionaire heir to family businesses and an entrepreneur himself, Phillips is in his third term in the House of Representatives for a district comprising part of suburban Minneapolis. He was first elected in 2018, when Democrats wrested numerous seats from Republicans in Donald Trump’s midterm congressional elections.

“We are an extraordinary country that had been divided by two parties, in which I’m gravely disappointed,” he said at the Hampton restaurant. The Democrat seemed at times willing to run on the centrist No Labels platform should he fail to win the nomination, but has since clearly ruled out that possibility.

During most of his events, he takes questions from the audience. “I think if you run for president, you should show up and face the voters and walk through the snow and see the press and answer questions and do debates and do town halls. I mean, it ain’t rocket science, my friends. And that’s why I celebrate all the candidates who come here to do so. Because democracy dies in the absence of its practice, and there is not a state in this country that understands that better than you. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it over the last 90 days. My goodness, you’re good at that,” he said in what was also a criticism of his rival, Joe Biden, who has not campaigned in New Hampshire.

To annoy the president, Phillips has been running a television ad around the state comparing him to Bigfoot, arguing that both are hard to find. “I’m something of an expert on elusive creatures,” a man disguised as a Sasquatch says in the ad. “So I challenged myself to find President Biden in New Hampshire during this primary season. I thought I was good at hiding,” Sasquatch says in the video.

Criticism aside, the 55-year-old Democratic congressman defends Biden’s policies, but believes that because of his age (he would be 82 when he begins a second term), he should not run for re-election. In that sense, he’s in agreement with Republican Nikki Haley, 52, who also believes the generational page must be turned. Phillips says he would be happy to face her in the presidential race: “I think a Haley-Phillips showdown this November would be a better thing for this country,” he said Sunday, even though his chances are close to zero, according to polls. Phillips and Haley were both born on Jan. 20, the day U.S. presidents are inaugurated, but so far nothing seems to indicate that they will spend their next birthday taking the oath of office.

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