North Dakota governor enters crowded presidential race
Billionaire Burgum vows business focus
FARGO, N.D. — Governor Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, former software executive, and billionaire, announced Wednesday he would run for president on his economic record, entering an increasingly crowded race as the stolid candidate of business and technology.
“If you want more smalltown common sense in Washington and our big cities, we’ll make that happen,” Burgum told the crowd at a rally in Fargo, N.D. “We need the governor and business leader who understands this changing economy. I want to earn your vote.” He acknowledged the ground he would need to make up to win his party’s presidential nomination but said he had been underestimated before.
The size of the field signals that former president Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, has not scared off many challengers. But he has also yet to fully consolidate support behind his candidacy, and numerous rivals apparently see a path to the nomination, no matter how narrow it might be.
As the leader of his deep-red state, Burgum has overseen a period of significant economic expansion. Still, he has assented to staunchly conservative social policies, even as he has downplayed his role in them.
This year, Burgum signed into law a near-total ban on abortion and created significant restrictions on gender transition care, including banning any requirements that teachers or school administrators use a student’s preferred pronouns.
Such social policies were nowhere to be found in his campaign launch, which largely eschewed partisan appeals to a conservative base and focused on three issues: the economy, energy, and national security. Workmanlike in his delivery, with eyes glued on the teleprompters, Burgum may not look like a political natural, but his hope is that Republican voters will want a solid technician to return the party to its low-tax, deregulatory entrepreneurial roots.
Outside the converted Lutheran church where his rally was held, a clutch of protesters appeared determined not to let him run away from his more recent record. Cody J. Schuler, an advocacy manager at the North Dakota American Civil Liberties Union, acknowledged that as a business leader, Burgum embraced LGBTQ rights as good for all citizens and businesses.
But in signing the bills passed by the conservative North Dakota legislature, Schuler said, the governor “threw away the lives of North Dakota citizens for his presidential aspirations.”
Even Burgum’s most ardent supporters at the rally expressed doubts that the governor of a state of 775,000 could qualify for the all-important primary debates, a bar that now requires 40,000 unique donors and 1 percent in national Republican polls.
“He’ll have the resources to be competitive,” said Tony Grindberg, a senior manager at North Dakota’s electric company who previously served in the state legislature. “The question is, can he connect with the rest of the country? That will be fun to watch as a North Dakotan.”
Burgum is the second sitting governor to enter the race after Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has staked out aggressively conservative social policy positions and attracted national spotlight for dust-ups with Disney.
Yet Burgum’s aides say he is planning a campaign focused less on social issues and more on his business background and fiscal stewardship of the state, which included cuts to both local property taxes and state income taxes.
At his launch, he never mentioned transgender issues or abortion and put himself forward as a unifying voice — “a smart guy who has achieved a lot,” as his campaign video put it.