U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips is not sure what he’ll do after departing Washington in January, but he said he has no plans to aim for either Minnesota’s governorship or the U.S. Senate.

“I’m not intending to go away. I’m going to take some time, take a breath, think about how I can serve my country in other ways,” Phillips said Monday. “I’ll be around, but I’m not running for governor, just so you know. I’m not running for Senate.”

Phillips, a wealthy businessman who in 2019 was the first Democrat in more than 50 years to represent Minnesota’s Third Congressional District that covers the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, did not run for a fourth term this year. In recent weeks, he watched instead as fellow Democrat Kelly Morrison ascended to the office.

On his way out, Phillips drew the ire of his own party when he became one of the first Democrats to publicly call for President Joe Biden to step down from his re-election campaign. That came within a year of Phillips launching his own short-lived presidential bid.

Phillips appeared at a farewell town hall meeting in Minnetonka on Monday attended by around 300 people. The audience gave him standing ovations before and after he answered questions for about an hour.

During the standing-room-only event, Phillips did not apologize for his outspokenness and had candid words about the country’s two-party system.

Here’s a short recap of some of his discussion points Monday:

When asked if he would ever return to politics, Phillips said it’s more about whether politics “come back” to him. He said fellow Democrats are still upset with his public criticism of Biden’s re-election.

“Not because I was saying something different than what they were all thinking, not because they didn’t know what I was saying was true, but because of what I said made it uncomfortable. ... My friends, we have got to make more people feel uncomfortable sometimes.”

He said he felt no regrets about it.

“I would tell people not what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear,” he said. “I did so sometimes at personal cost — in fact, regularly at personal cost — and I tell you I’ve never, ever felt better about myself than I do tonight in front of all of you.”

Phillips said “one of his great disappointments” in his six years in Congress was the “cowardice” of both his Republican and Democratic colleagues. He said they failed to be transparent, honest and to do what was right for the country, even if it would cost them their jobs.

“[Their] cowardice — and I don’t know a better word for it — is extraordinarily consequential to this country,” he said.

Several times Monday, Phillips said the United States is in desperate need of a third party because Republicans and Democrats were not productive and don’t serve the interests of voters.

He said there is no incentive for bipartisanship anymore in Washington, arguing that his friendship with Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson, of South Dakota, was used against him in a primary race this year.

He accused both parties of colluding to stifle any third-party competition, characterizing them as private corporations that have formed a duopoly and do not answer to voters.

Without any third party, he said, it’s impossible for anyone to climb the ranks in either party without making concessions to their values and principles. They must either be an ideological match or enact a “hostile takeover” to reach a leadership position.

To improve things, Phillips encouraged voters to turn out for primary elections, support ranked-choice voting and help end gerrymandering.

“If we don’t have competition, I can guarantee you this will get worse, not better,” he said.

For his last question of the evening, Phillips sifted through a container of handwritten questions from the audience to find a difficult one. He picked a question about the Israel-Hamas war.

Phillips, who is Jewish, described the conflict not as a genocide but as an effort to “preserve and protect the sanctity of a country that is constantly at risk.”

He said Hamas is more responsible for the conflict “than any organization or government right now.”

However, he said he does not care about Jewish people more than Palestinians and that he is just as sickened by them being “slaughtered” as he is about Jewish people being persecuted throughout history.

Phillips said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also “accountable” for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and that he has “blood on his hands.”

“I will forever believe that Benjamin Netanyahu has been a stain on the state of Israel, and I have told that to his face,” he said. “You can imagine how that went over.”