Doug Burgum took a shot.
"I am not throwin' away my shot
I am not throwin' away my shot
Hey yo, I'm just like my country
I'm young, scrappy and hungry
And I'm not throwin' away my shot
It's time to take a shot."
Lin-Manuel Miranda, "My Shot," from Hamilton, 2015.
I had to remind myself of his name to write about him. Doug Burgum.
Doug Burgum is the guy on the end of the stage, on our right.
He is the North Dakota governor. The GOP presidential candidate. The guy who made a billion dollars selling a software company to Microsoft. The one who said Pence did the right thing saying "no" to Trump. The one who raised his hand to say he would vote for Trump, even if Trump were convicted of a felony. The one who wanted abortion handled state by state.
Here he is close up.
Doug Burgum's workaround to qualify for the debate nudged him into the dim edge of national public awareness. He offered a $20 gift card to everyone who donated one dollar to his campaign. He needed 40,000 contributions of any amount. I sent him a dollar. A week later I got this gift card in the mail, loaded with $20. I also got an email and phone text every day from him until I managed to unsubscribe. Heads up: Donating puts you on lists.
He had his moment on the main stage. He got to introduce himself to America. He got his shot.
With an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion, he can afford controversial stunts. He couldn't afford to waste his shot. He did. He needed to have distinguished himself by saying something memorable. Pence said he wanted a national ban on abortion; Burgum said this should be a state matter. He didn't pound on the point, say why a national ban would be a disaster, or generalize from it to some bigger concept of states' rights. He needed a reason for people to say, "By gosh, Burgum is right" but his was a soft toss of a tiny pebble into a big pond, leaving barely a ripple.
Burgum has a tough job. Burgum appears to want to look normal. Reasonable. He would be old-style GOP leadership, promoting low taxes, small government, fewer abortions done with low-temperature rhetoric. There is a market for "normal" in the GOP electorate, but the energy in the GOP goes to flame throwers, and now it has two of them, Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy. Attention switched to Ramaswamy, who crashed the party with know-it-all flash and sweeping insults, giving the GOP audience an amped-up younger Trump. Nikki Haley distinguished herself by standing up to Ramaswamy, telling him he was a dangerous, inexperienced fool. That interaction defined the candidate's positions, making Haley the "normal" candidate, who stands up to upstart Trump wannabes -- although not yet to Trump. If Burgum has any position on the mental map of voters, I don't know what it is.
Why bother even wasting a blog post on him? Burgum will be an example of candidates dropping out. The field is clearing. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez just dropped out of the race, but he doesn't really count because who knew he was in it in the first place? Burgum will need to get to 3% in a national poll to be eligible for the next debate at the Reagan Library. If there had been votes up for grabs, after that debate Haley or someone else would likely get them, not Burgum.
Burgum serves by losing. Alternatives to Trump get credibility by demonstrating that voters are choosing them, not that other guy, that governor from North Dakota, that guy on the edge of the stage, Doug something. A guy with a billion dollars can easily afford to spend 10% of it on a presidential race. Why not? He gave it a shot.
I used the $20 gift card to buy two bags of frozen berries at $9.99 each.