Meet a leading Trump vice-presidential contender
FEW CONSIDER North Dakota, home to just under 800,000 people, to be a political laboratory. Though a beautiful and pleasant place to raise a family, North Dakota lacks a tourist draw like South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore. And it was the only state that saw its population decline between 1930 and 2000, while America’s more than doubled in size. Yet the Peace Garden State has produced plenty of notable Americans. North Dakota’s hall of fame, a collection of portraits on the ground floor of the state’s 19-storey Art Deco capitol, honours authors, generals, Olympians, entertainers—and even some journalists. It also features the former CEO of Great Plains Software, Doug Burgum.
The 67-year-old from Arthur, a town of about 325 near the Minnesota border, was already famous by North Dakotan standards when he ran for governor in 2016. He has been the dominant figure in the state’s politics ever since. Few Americans, however, had heard of him when he announced a long-shot Republican presidential candidacy in June 2023. His campaign focused on economic growth, energy production and national security—standard Republican fare. Yet to the surprise of many in Washington, DC, Mr Burgum has emerged as one of the favourites (alongside J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, a pair of Republican senators) to be selected as Mr Trump’s running-mate. The former president has been teasing the identity of his pick for months, but must eventually end the sort-of-suspense when he accepts his party’s nomination next week in Milwaukee.
Mr Burgum’s full-blown entry into politics came relatively late in life. His mother served on the Republican National Committee during the Nixon era, but he was in no rush to dive in himself. After earning a bachelor’s degree at North Dakota State University and an MBA from Stanford, he joined the accounting-software business memorialised in his capitol portrait. The company went public in 1997, and Microsoft purchased it a few years later. Mr Burgum then went into venture capital and helped revitalise downtown Fargo through his real-estate development firm.
North Dakota’s Republicans knew of him as a businessman and donor, and would sometimes see him at state conventions. Then he crashed the party, largely self-funding a run for governor in 2016 with no prior experience in elected office. Shane Goettle, a North Dakota Republican National Committeeman, says he got to know Mr Burgum during that campaign. “He was very inquisitive about politics,” Mr Goettle recalls. “He’s very data-driven. He’s hungry for information. He absorbs it, and the process may change his outlook.”
He is also happy to break with tradition. Typically North Dakota’s Republicans pick their nominee at their convention, and the winner runs in a pro-forma primary. After Mr Burgum came in third place at the party confab he challenged the winner anyway. He traversed the state and overcame a 40-point deficit in the polls. “He took an unconventional approach, which was unpopular with a lot of people and was with me, because I’m a party guy,” says John Trandem, the North Dakota Republican Party’s first vice-chair. “I like to honour our convention results, which have led us to the Republican dominance that we’ve seen in North Dakota over the past 30 years.”
Mr Burgum did not govern as a MAGA type. “We came in not as the establishment, but if you had to throw us into a bucket, it would be the Chamber of Commerce-type-Republican,” says Brent Sanford, who served as lieutenant-governor from 2016 to 2023. He calls the governor a “pragmatist” who pushed deregulation and lower taxes. Allies and adversaries alike acknowledge that social issues don’t animate Mr Burgum the way they do much of the Republican base. He signed a restrictive abortion law but is more comfortable discussing economic development than waging culture wars.
The governor didn’t achieve his goal of reducing income taxes to zero, but he did sign a $515m income- and property-tax cut as part of a roughly $19bn budget last year. His allies also point to a state pension-system reform and his emphasis on infrastructure investment. He can point to impressive numbers. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country at 2%, and runs a budget surplus. Forbes ranked it the best state to start a business in 2023 and 2024.
Mr Burgum still has critics, particularly among party activists. They made their governor only an alternate delegate at the Republican National Convention, an obvious snub for the highest-ranking elected official in the state. Despite the tax cuts, government spending has grown on his watch. Some Republicans are critical of his pet project, a presidential museum for Theodore Roosevelt (a New Yorker who spent some formative years in North Dakota). Mr Burgum’s response to the covid-19 pandemic, which included his promotion of a contact-tracing app, also angers party members like Lori Hinz, a Republican National Committeewoman. She says that she has yet to meet Mr Trump but would recommend he “steer clear”.
For now, Mr Burgum remains a contender for the vice-presidential nod. He has developed a relationship with Mr Trump since endorsing him—campaigning around the country and appearing outside the Manhattan courthouse during the former president’s trial. He frequently appears on Fox News and would be a shoo-in for a cabinet position, like interior or energy secretary, if he is passed over for the number-two position.
Mr Trump’s choice could well surprise. But if it is Mr Burgum, North Dakotans who have watched his ascent won’t be shocked. Any doubts about the governor are just a reflection of outsiders’ own biases, reckons David Hogue, majority leader of the state Senate: “People consistently underestimate him, just because he’s from North Dakota. I think that’s a given.” ■