FARGO — Gov. Doug Burgum knows that he would be seen as a long-shot candidate if he were to toss his hat into next year’s presidential race.
But he insists that he isn’t daunted to jump into a race as a dark horse, and recalled that he ran as an outsider with no endorsements when he entered the North Dakota governor’s race in 2016.
Now that the legislative session is behind him, Burgum said he will decide whether to join a field of Republican presidential candidates dominated in the early stages by former President Donald Trump.
“That’ll be next, to think about 2024,” Burgum told The Forum Editorial Board. Any candidate for national office coming from North Dakota, a small state with three electoral college votes, would have to overcome the bias against rural states, he said.
“There is a geographical bigotry that exists,” Burgum said.
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Campaigning as an underdog wouldn’t be a new experience for Burgum, a former software executive and entrepreneur who entered the 2016 gubernatorial race as a political newcomer with 10% support.
He challenged the late Wayne Stenehjem, the popular attorney general and the GOP’s endorsed candidate, with Burgum trailing as the third choice in the nominating convention.
But Burgum won the primary handily, beating Stenehjem by more than 10 percentage points, and cruised four years later to a second term.
“There’s a value to being underestimated all the time,” Burgum said, recalling that he had no endorsements in his first race. “That’s a competitive advantage.”
He said he believes 60% of American voters are an exhausted “silent majority” that's been neglected as the political debate is dominated by candidates on the ideological fringes.
“All the engagement right now is occurring on the edge,” he said. “There’s definitely a yearning for some alternatives right now."
If he doesn’t run for president, Burgum said one of the attributes he would be looking for in a candidate would be someone espousing an energy policy that would be driven by innovation, not regulation.
“Energy policy drives America,” he said.
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The energy policies of the Biden and Obama administrations, with a heavy-handed approach to weaning the country from fossil fuels, has been destructive and has caused global imbalances, Burgum said.
“I really feel like our energy policy is destabilizing the global economy,” he said. “To me it comes down to innovation instead of regulation.”
As governor, Burgum has set an ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 by exploiting research in North Dakota to harness underground geological formations to store carbon, an approach that shuns mandates or regulations.
News that Burgum might be mulling entering the race broke in March, when he traveled to Iowa to meet with Story County Republicans at a “meet and greet” in Nevada, a town of 7,000 near Ames.
Exploratory trips to Iowa, the first state to vote in the Republican presidential nominating race in 2024, are often taken by potential candidates.
The biography included in the invitation to Story County Republicans to meet Burgum stressed his background as an executive at Great Plains Software, the homegrown Fargo business software firm acquired by Microsoft in 2007 for $1.1 billion.
“Firmly rooted with gratitude and perseverance, Burgum literally ‘bet the family farm’ for the seed capital for Great Plains Software,” the bio sketch said, referring to Burgum using his share of his family’s agricultural interests as startup loan collateral.
The introduction also noted Burgum’s 2006 founding of Kilbourne Group, the real estate development firm that has been active in downtown Fargo, his 2008 co-founding of Arthur Ventures, a venture capital firm, and his service as board chairman of Atlassian and executive chairman of West Fargo-based Intelligent Insites, acquired in 2020 by Infor.
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Two political scientists said Burgum, who is little-known outside North Dakota, would face significant challenges if he enters the presidential race.
“He’s in a small state with few electoral votes,” a major handicap to overcome, said Lloyd Omdahl, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of North Dakota and a former Democratic lieutenant governor.
“He’d have to buck Trump and I don’t know if he’d want to buck Trump, because he is wicked if you go against him,” Omdahl said.
Burgum seems out of step with today’s Republican party, which skews heavily toward Trump and his “Make America Great Again” agenda, focusing on culture war issues and populist nationalism, said Mark Jendrysik, UND political science professor.
“He’s not a fire-breathing conservative,” he said, referring to Burgum’s low-key style and non-inflammatory rhetoric. “He’s not notably attached to President Trump. I’m not sure he would be appealing to many Republican primary voters. They want someone who’s going to get up there and be a flamethrower. That’s not his style. He’s not like that. It’s hard to know who he would be appealing to.”
Under Republican rules, the presidential candidate with a plurality of the vote — not a majority — can win the nomination, leaving an opportunity for a firebrand to rouse support.
“He can’t convincingly do that, I don’t think,” Jendrysik said. “Maybe he’s looking down the road to 2028.”
To be competitive, Omdahl and Jendrysik said, Burgum would have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for a campaign. Normally, Jendrysik said, a candidate would lay the groundwork by forming an exploratory committee and lining up endorsements.
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“I don’t know how much money he’s got, but it’s very expensive,” Omdahl said, suggesting Burgum’s personal wealth might not be enough to mount a competitive campaign.
Winning the nomination might not necessarily be Burgum’s aim, if he ran for president, the political scientists said.
“Maybe he can corner a few delegates and go down with a few people to play kingmaker, who knows?” Omdahl said. “He’ll get recognition.”
If a Republican wins the presidency, and Burgum makes a good showing, he could be a contender for a cabinet post or some other political reward, Omdahl and Jendrysik said.
To do that, Burgum will need to stand out in a field where candidates lag far behind Trump in the polls, Omdahl said.
“What he needs to do is get visibility early on,” he said. “If you’re going to get in it, you’ve got to get in it.”
During a recent appearance on the Plain Talk podcast with Forum Communications columnist Rob Port, Burgum acknowledged he was still considering a run for president. He didn’t rule out running for a third term as governor. Port was the first to report Burgum’s meeting with Republicans in Iowa .
If Burgum enters the GOP presidential sweepstakes, he wouldn’t be the first candidate from North Dakota .
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In 1936, William Lemke ran as a candidate for the Union Party, although he was a Nonpartisan League politician who had been Republican. Lemke was a Fargo lawyer who served as a maverick in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1930s and 1940s.
More recently, in 2012 and 2016, Gary Johnson, who was born in Minot, was the Libertarian Party candidate for president.
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