Why is the governor of North Dakota running for president?
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North Dakota’s Republican Gov. Doug Burgum believes Americans are frustrated by candidates not talking about issues that matter to them, but he said his long shot presidential campaign will focus on those issues and this will give him the best chance of beating President Joe Biden.
“There’s a broad spectrum of Americans that are really frustrated with the discourse that’s happening at the edge, and part of the reason they’re frustrated is because there aren’t candidates, there aren’t choices on the ballot, to talk about the things that matter to them,” Burgum said in an interview Sunday with NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
He said the top three issues he believes Americans care about are the economy, energy policy and national security.
Burgum, a 66-year-old former software company executive who took office as governor in 2016, compared politicians focused on culture wars issues to distracted CEOs.
“We are somehow, through culture, media, whatever, trapping the presidency or expecting them to weigh in on every single thing,” he said. “It’s not the place that a CEO should be spending their time. It’s definitely not the place where the president should be spending their time.”
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He added that the U.S. needs “a president that’s focused on the challenges that we’re being faced as a nation, not a president that’s going to decide whether a book is in the right section or not in a library in a small town somewhere in America.”
During the wide-ranging interview, Burgum was asked if he’d ever do business with former President Donald Trump and he said he didn’t think so because “it’s important that you’re judged by the company you keep.”
He signed a restrictive abortion ban in North Dakota in April but said as president he would leave abortion policy to the states. He also had harsh words for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of Burgum’s biggest challenges in the Republican primary will be name ID. Among registered voters, 90% hadn’t heard enough about him to have an opinion, according to Quinnipiac poll released a week after Burgum announced his campaign last month. His campaign is spending big to make up the difference. In the first two weeks of his campaign, Burgum spent more than $2.9 million on ads, which is more than Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spent in the same period combined, according to data from AdImpact, an ad tracking firm.
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Burgum said he viewed the presidency differently than other branches of government in that it should unite the country, but that the U.S. has “gone astray on that, where the presidency has also become hyperpartisan, no matter which party is in office.”
“If you’re a legislator you put on your jersey, you fight for your side, you vote oftentimes along party lines,” he said. “The president of the United States, as this balancing third branch, is the one that’s supposed to unite people, it’s supposed to bring people together, it’s supposed to paint a vision about a powerful, positive future.”
