North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, said Wednesday on Newsmax that he's not concerned about the crowded competition for the spot, as that is good for both his campaign and for Republican voters.
"I've spent most of my career in the private sector, and competition is great for consumers' choices," Burgum said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "Americans love choice, and I think having a chance for Republican voters to understand and see what the different candidates are bringing is fantastic."
Burgum, who announced his candidacy in early June, is a former computer software entrepreneur and acknowledged that while he's still relatively unknown nationally and polling at about 1%, back in 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump was also polling at that rate and ended up winning.
"There's just a lot of twists and turns ahead on this thing, and we're looking forward to bringing the story about myself growing up in a small town in North Dakota," he told Newsmax. "My dad died when I was a freshman in high school. He was a World War II vet. I had a little bit of farm ground. Uh that I had. I took that money and invested it in the software startup company. We built that into a 2,000-person company. I had hundreds of thousands of customers in over 132 countries around the world, so anything can happen."
Burgum founded Great Plains Software, which was sold for $1.1 billion in 2001 to Microsoft, where it became Microsoft Dynamics, reports Forbes.
Burgum said Wednesday he was in the private sector until 2016 when he ran for governor. He noted that the leading contender for that spot had 69% in the polls versus himself at 10%, but 6 months later, "we beat him 60% to 40% in a primary."
"Through my whole life. I've always had people, you know, saying 'Hey, small town, kid.' Every job I had till I was in my mid-20s was a job where I took a shower at the end of the day and not at the beginning of the day, working on the farm, the ranch, the grain elevator, even as a chimney sweep to pay my way through college," Burgum said.
He added that he believes people will be interested in learning about him as someone who understands the things that matter to Americans.
"We're going to be talking about the economy, energy, and national security, and these are the things where Joe Biden is 180 degrees in the wrong direction," he said. "It's not just that we need a course correction. We've got to turn around and go the other way."
Burgum added that even though his race is low in the polls so far, he expects to be in the GOP primary debate in Milwaukee in August.
He also noted that while he supported Trump in 2016 and 2020, he's running against him now for the nomination because "we've got to be looking to the future, not to the past."
"I think it's important to have a voice," he said. "We're going to be talking about what a disaster Joe Biden has been for the economy. Our economy is crawling instead of running. Inflation has been out of control."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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