Dean Phillips says he won’t seek House re-election in 2024

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) announced Friday he won’t seek re-election to Congress in 2024, nearly a month after launching a primary challenge to President Biden for the Democratic nomination.

“My journey to public service began the morning after the 2016 election, when I faced the reality that democracy requires participation — not observation,” Phillips said in a statement, referencing former President Donald Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton.

“Seven years have passed, each presenting historic opportunities to practice a brand of optimistic politics that repairs relationships and improves people’s lives. We have met those moments, and after three terms it is time to pass the torch.”

The representative from Minnesota’s Third Congressional District kicked off his presidential campaign on Oct. 26, declaring that Biden, 81, must step aside as polls showed their party’s chances in the 2024 election were dire if he insisted on running for a second term.

“I will not sit still, I will not be quiet in the face of numbers that are so clearly saying that we’re going to be facing an emergency next November,” he told CBS News in an interview.

Concerns over Biden’s age and both his and Vice President Kamala Harris’ low approval numbers have prompted Democratic allies to call for the commander -in-chief — who would be 86 years old at the end of a hypothetical second term — to step down.

Former President Barack Obama’s top campaign strategist David Axelrod last week put Biden’s chances of victory at “no better” than a “50-50 shot” and “maybe a little worse.”

In his Friday statement, Phillips stressed that his time in office occurred “during some of the darkest days in our nation’s history” and the US is still “facing a crisis of cooperation, common sense, and truth.”

“Civility matters, respect matters, listening matters, and effective governance matters. No party has a monopoly on solutions, and we must stop fighting one another and begin fighting for one another — before it is too late,” he said.

“The future is very bright, as long as we have the courage and make the choice to seek it. Keep the faith!” he added, expressing gratitude for his constituents and staff members.

His office highlighted in a press release that his service “included some of the most consequential and turbulent events in American politics,” including “the end of the longest federal government shutdown in our nation’s history, a violent insurrection, two presidential impeachments, civic unrest, extreme polarization and the global public health and economic crises brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The press release touted Phillips’ “reputation as a principled problem solver, respected by his peers for his pragmatism and by his constituents for his commitment to accessibility.”

It also celebrates him as the “​​[s]econd most bipartisan elected official when weighed against all Governors, Senators, and House Members by the nonpartisan Common Ground Committee.”

According to a FiveThirtyEight review of his tenure, Phillips voted with Biden’s agenda 100% of the time while in Congress.

The Minnesota Democrat is currently 66 percentage points behind Biden in the primary, registering 4.4% support in the RealClearPolitics national polling average.

The president sits at 70.4% support and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson is in a distant second place at 7.4% support, the polling aggregator shows.

Meanwhile, the RCP average of head-to-head polls between Trump, 77, and Biden show the Republican frontrunner beating the president by 2.3 percentage points.

Several recent surveys also show Trump’s lead is outside the margin of error.