It was a mostly pro-impeachment crowd at U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips’ town hall meeting in suburban Brooklyn Park last month. A retired DFL legislator from Minnetonka drew applause from many of the 200 people when he urged Phillips and his fellow Democrats in Washington to “regain the authority” in the impeachment process underway against President Donald Trump.
But Phillips, a freshman who unseated a long-serving suburban Republican last year, was measured in his response. “I didn’t run for Congress to impeach a president,” he told the group. Phillips reminded his constituents he was slow to back the impeachment inquiry — “I resisted a lot of calls from the left to come out many months ago.”
The political verdict on the impeachment push by the House’s Democratic majority will depend in large part on the response of voters in suburban congressional districts increasingly at the fulcrum of national elections. Phillips, who won his suburban Hennepin and Carver County district on a message of political unity, must now reconcile his desire for bipartisanship with support for an impeachment inquiry that’s split Washington along party lines.