Dean Phillips: “Today, I bid farewell to my amazing staff, some of whom are in the gallery, my wonderful colleagues on both sides of the…”

“Today, I bid farewell to my amazing staff, some of whom are in the gallery, my wonderful colleagues on both sides of the aisle, constituents, and the myriad of unsung heroes to whom our entire Nation owes a debt of gratitude. I thank them all from the top of my heart. To my amazing family all around the country who has stood by me in times of both great joy and pain: my mother, DeeDee, and my late father, Eddie; my brothers, Tyler, Jay, and Bobby; my sisters, Hutton and Lily; and my treasured daughters, Daniela and Pia, who compelled me to run for Congress in 2018: I love you all with all my heart. I depart this august institution with a combination of deep gratitude, a little bit of attitude, and a healthy dose of American optimism. To those who are pleased to see this affable but outspoken gadfly ride off into the sunset, I am sorry to say that my mission to restore common sense and a home for the exhausted majority of center left and center right Americans is just beginning. It is a mission whose roots were not planted here in Washington or back home in Minnesota but rather 8,000 miles away on Dragon Mountain in Pleiku, Vietnam, where my father, Captain Artie Pfefer, was killed fighting a war in which he did not believe, but for a country in which he believed very deeply. Last year, I traveled to the very ground on which he took his last breath and where I took my first.…”