Doug Burgum, wealthy governor of North Dakota, enters presidential race

Gov. Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota who rose from a chimney sweep to one of the richest men in the state, announced a presidential campaign on Wednesday, entering an increasingly crowded race in which he is presented with extraordinary opportunities.

“We need a new leader for a changing economy,” Mr. Burgum wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal which was strongly focused on his business acumen. He plans to show up at an event in Fargo, ND around noon

The size of the field indicates that former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican frontrunner, has not deterred many challengers. But he’s also yet to fully consolidate the support behind his candidacy, and numerous rivals apparently see a path to the nomination, however narrow it may be.

As leader of his scarlet state, Mr. Burgum has overseen a period of significant economic expansion and pursued staunchly conservative policies.

This year, Mr Burgum signed a near-total ban on abortion and placed significant restrictions on gender reassignment care, including banning requirements that teachers or school administrators use a student’s preferred pronouns.

He is the second incumbent governor to enter the race, following Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has taken aggressively conservative stances on social policy and grabbed the national spotlight for spinoffs with major corporations like Disney.

Yet Mr Burgum’s aides say he is planning a campaign that focuses less on social issues and more on his business background and state fiscal stewardship, which would include reductions in both local property and income taxes. He will emphasize economics, energy and national security in his early campaigns, viewing the current debate as too focused on social issues and not on voters’ top concerns.

In a recent interview speaking to the editors of The Fargo Forum, a local news outlet, Mr. Burgum said he believed 60 percent of American voters had been neglected because the margin dominated political debate.

“All the involvement right now is on the edge,” he said. “There is certainly a desire for some alternatives right now.”

While his national media appearances are sparse, Mr. Burgum has been able to break into energy policy debates, providing a window into how he could frame his proposals in opposition to those of Republican rivals and President Biden. In March he told Fox News that the Biden administration’s economic plan was “decoupled from economics, decoupled from physics, and decoupled from common sense.” He argued that Japan and other Asian countries were ripe markets for US energy exports.

On Monday, his campaign tried to address his lack of national name recognition with a glossy biography video in which the governor tells his life story, with expansive views of the cliffs and energy fields of North Dakota.

His campaign’s confidence that he can grow from a relatively unknown to a legitimate candidate stems from his own political career in North Dakota. When Mr. Burgum announced his bid for governor in 2016, he was an outsider with little name recognition outside of Fargo, and his main opponent, Wayne Stenehjem, the Attorney General, had the support of North Dakota’s Republican Party.

But with ample resources and a campaign swept to the right, Mr. Burgum endorsed Donald J. Trump for president in May 2016 — he rode to a 20 percentage point win The Bismarck Tribune proclaimed “has rocked the Republican Party establishment in North Dakota.” He has not been seriously challenged in North Dakota since then.

‘There is value in being constantly underestimated’, Mr. Burgum told The Fargo Forum. “That’s a competitive advantage.”

As the only non-East Coast candidate with an upbringing deeply rooted in the rural Midwest, Mr. Burgum will likely focus most of his efforts in Iowa, a state with an extensive agricultural community. Mr. Burgum grew up in Arthur, ND, a town of barely 300 people where his family owned the only grain elevator.

While attending North Dakota State University as an undergraduate, Mr. Burgum started a chimney sweep business in Fargo from a friend’s pickup truck. His newfound business caught the attention of local newspapers, which published photos of a soot-laden Mr. Burgum dressed in a tuxedo hopping from roof to roof, raking in about $40 per chimney.

Mr. Burgum included those newspaper clippings in his business school applications, and he was soon enrolled in Stanford Business School. After receiving his MBA from Stanford, Mr. Burgum joined Great Plains Software, a Fargo company that specialized in accounting software, where he quickly rose to chief executive.

Far from the more fertile tech hubs of Silicon Valley, Mr. Burgum expanded Great Plains Software into a major player in the industry, which he eventually sold to Microsoft for $1.1 billion. He would then serve as a senior vice president at Microsoft until 2007.

Mr. Burgum’s worth stretches to nine figures, sure enough to help fund a burgeoning presidential run, and his aides expect his business network to help bring in major donors as well. But from the start of his campaign, no super-PAC or outside group has emerged to support Mr Burgum’s candidacy.