North Dakota governor lays out path to White House
North Dakota governor lays out path to White House
Transcript
00:00 One of the thresholds to qualify for the first Republican presidential debate next month
00:04 is 40,000 unique donors.
00:07 North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has made some noise with his unorthodox strategy, giving
00:11 $20 gift cards in exchange for new campaign donations, which can be as small as $1.
00:19 North Dakota Governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Doug Burgum joins us
00:23 now from Sioux City, Iowa.
00:25 Governor, as I understand it, you have as of today qualified for the first Republican
00:30 debate, achieving 40,000 unique donors.
00:33 Is that true?
00:34 Yeah, that's absolutely correct, Major.
00:36 And I just want to give a big shout out of gratitude.
00:40 We had a group early on called the Sodbusters, and this was friends and family, and they
00:45 were hustling.
00:46 Within three and a half days, we had donations from all 50 states.
00:50 Everybody was combing their business contacts, their holiday card list to try to just build
00:57 the excitement from a grassroots basis around that, and business partners.
01:01 So whether it's friends from high school, business partners from 30 years ago, people
01:06 I've met across, and a lot of people in the state of North Dakota, a big thank you from
01:10 Catherine and I for all the support.
01:12 We had a goal to try to get to 40,000 in just over 40 days, and we reached that today.
01:18 Again, just grateful for all the support and all the interest.
01:21 And as I understand it, some of those received $20 gift cards, correct?
01:26 Yeah, absolutely they did.
01:29 And anybody, you know, I grew up in a small town in North Dakota, and farming was my background,
01:37 but I spent most of my years in tech, and software tech specifically.
01:41 Anybody knows that anybody's ever opened up an online business, when nobody knows you
01:45 you're getting started, you put a product out there, and you offer it for a discount,
01:49 and try to get people to know who you are, and what kind of service you provide.
01:53 And we did have a promotional offer, it's still on, so if people haven't gotten their
02:00 $20 gift card, we're happy to do that.
02:02 But I just want to say again, there's plenty of rackets in politics, and one of them is
02:07 the online companies that can charge upwards of $100 to acquire a donor.
02:13 We figured out a way to do that at about 1/10th the price, because not everybody wants a gift
02:18 card.
02:19 Some people are happy to give, and a lot of people give more than a dollar, but if you
02:21 give a dollar, and just to help us see on the debate stage, we send you a gift card
02:26 to help offset the inflation that they've experienced under the Biden administration.
02:31 They can use it to purchase gas, or have your whole family send in a donation, and then
02:37 get enough cards you can take your family out to dinner.
02:39 Right.
02:40 Do you have any idea, Governor, what percentage of those 40,000 received, or will receive,
02:46 gift cards?
02:47 Well, I've been on the road today in Iowa, so I don't know the number, but we did commit
02:52 that we would give away up to 50,000 of those.
02:55 And so if people haven't got one yet, they can still go there and still get one today,
02:59 and we'll be happy to blow past the 40,000 level.
03:02 We'd rather be giving something back to our supporters than giving it to some big tech
03:09 online fundraising company.
03:11 Right.
03:12 And as I understand it, you're self-financing, so essentially they're getting money directly
03:15 from you.
03:16 No, I'm not self-financing.
03:17 I don't know why that keeps being repeated all the time, but this is going to be, we'll
03:22 have a fully financed campaign, but in this day and age, the only way this works is if
03:26 people believe in you.
03:28 I've always put some of my own money in every startup I've ever been in.
03:31 I literally, literally, my dad passed away when I was a freshman in high school, got
03:35 a bit of farm drunk.
03:36 I literally mortgaged that to be the seed capital for the first software company I was
03:41 involved with, Great Plains Software.
03:42 But just like Great Plains and everything I've ever done, we've had outside investors
03:46 and we've got people that have been very generously stepping up here in the early part of the
03:50 campaign to support what we're doing.
03:53 Is there anything from your vantage point, Governor, that is even nominally, absurd is
03:59 probably too strong a word, but distracting about this 40,000 donor threshold that the
04:05 Republican National Committee has established to get on the debate stage.
04:09 Couldn't you be spending your time and efforts better?
04:11 Well, absolutely.
04:12 The good news is I haven't had to spend much time on it because we had a, I'd say a good,
04:18 you know, entrepreneurial approach to, you know, solving this problem.
04:22 And we just said, Hey, it's a check box.
04:24 We'll check it.
04:25 But yeah, it's kind of, it's a goofy rule and it's a goofy rule because it, you know,
04:29 it favors people that have held national office.
04:31 It favors people that are from large states.
04:33 It, you know, it really is against people that might have the right kind of qualities
04:39 that are less well known.
04:40 And so again, it's a, it's a form of limiting competition and limiting fresh ideas.
04:45 I think competition is great for the Republican party.
04:48 And I, you know, if some people think that, you know, 12 people is too many, like, Oh,
04:53 it's a crowded field.
04:54 It's like, Hey, you know, when I was a chairman or CEO, if we posted for a job and only 12
04:59 submitted resumes, and some of them weren't even qualified, you know, we'd probably look
05:03 at each other and say, we better repost because we want to get, you know, 30, 50 or a hundred
05:07 candidates.
05:08 So it's, it's one of the absurdities of American politics that somehow, you know, people think
05:12 these fields are crowded when it's the most important job in the world.
05:16 And I said, I think competition is what America has been built on.
05:19 So we're, yeah, but you know, we'll check the box.
05:21 We'll be on the debate stage and we're going to keep, keep charging going forward.
05:25 We didn't spend a lot of time sweating this one.
05:27 We've been focused on the issues that matter most to the American public and that's economy,
05:32 energy, national security.
05:33 And we talk about that at every stop.
05:37 You mentioned qualifications.
05:38 Are you more qualified than president Trump?
05:42 Well, I'm not going to make a judgment sets up to the American voters are going to have
05:47 side.
05:48 We have to make our case.
05:49 But I think, you know, someone who's got a background as a governor, I understand what
05:52 federal overreach looks at, looks like, cause I've been on the receiving end, but I've also
05:56 been a small business owner.
05:57 And I know what it's like to cut your own salary to make sure you can make payroll.
06:02 And I've also led global businesses.
06:04 And I understand that we're in competition directly with China, the number two economy
06:09 in the world is trying to overtake us.
06:11 We're in a cold war with China.
06:13 We're in a, we're in really in at war with Russia.
06:17 We just haven't sent troops yet.
06:19 And so we've got a very unstable world driven by both economic and energy policies that
06:24 are, that are not just off track, they're 180 degrees in the wrong direction.
06:29 As governor of a state, that's one of the largest food producing and one of the largest
06:33 energy producing states in the nation.
06:35 I understand a lot about the global economy and I understand how to take cost out.
06:39 In North Dakota, we took 1.7 billion out of a $6 billion budget and ended up delivering
06:45 better services to the public because there's never been anybody with a software technology,
06:51 service process improvement background that's ever run for this office.
06:56 And when we've got 2 million federal employees having somebody that knows how to take cost
06:59 out and provide better services, yeah, I'd say that's a great qualification.
07:04 Is there anything that former president Trump has done from your perspective, governor,
07:07 that disqualifies him from the presidency a second time?
07:11 Well, I think again, everybody's innocent until they're proven guilty.
07:17 There's been lots of accusations being kicked around, but I think again, it's up to the
07:23 public.
07:24 That's why we have elections.
07:25 I mean, this is a, you know, Super Bowl is not till next February and I, there's like
07:29 a whole industry of pundits that's trying to figure out, you know, that the game's already
07:33 over and they already know who the two players are going to be in the game.
07:36 And the season hasn't even started yet.
07:38 I mean, elections start next January.
07:40 So this, you know, the voters of America are going to have a chance to weigh in next January
07:44 and February in the primary start, and they'll have the information they need that time to
07:48 make a decision on who's in the best position to beat Joe Biden.
07:51 And that's the case that we're going to keep making for the American public.
07:55 And you will not make the case as you make your case for yourself, governor, that the
07:59 former president has already disqualified himself from the office?
08:03 Well, again, there's plenty of, like there's an entire industry built around that question.
08:09 And I, you know, whether it's clickbait or cable news, I mean, you know, have at it.
08:14 Governor Doug Burgum, thanks for the time and safe travels.
08:18 Thank you, Major.
08:19 Great to be on with you.