Doug Burgum facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Doug Burgum
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Official portrait, 2016
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| 33rd Governor of North Dakota | |
| Assumed office December 15, 2016 |
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| Lieutenant | Brent Sanford Tammy Miller |
| Preceded by | Jack Dalrymple |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Douglas James Burgum
August 1, 1956 Arthur, North Dakota, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouses |
Karen Stoker
(m. 1991; div. 2003)Kathryn Helgaas
(m. 2016) |
| Children | 3 |
| Residence | Governor's Residence |
| Education | North Dakota State University (BA) Stanford University (MBA) |
| Occupation | Businessman, investor, philanthropist, politician |
| Profession | Management consultant |
Douglas James Burgum (born August 1, 1956) is an American businessman and politician serving since 2016 as the 33rd governor of North Dakota. He is among the wealthiest governors in the United States and has an estimated net worth of 0 million according to Forbes. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Burgum was born and raised in Arthur, North Dakota. After graduating from college in 1978 and earning an MBA two years later, he mortgaged inherited farmland in 1983 to invest in Great Plains Software in Fargo. Becoming its president in 1984, he grew Great Plains into a successful software company. Burgum sold the company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001. While working at Microsoft, he managed Microsoft Business Solutions. He has served as board chairman for Atlassian and SuccessFactors. Burgum is the founder of Kilbourne Group, a Fargo-based real-estate development firm, and also is the co-founder of Arthur Ventures, a software venture capital group.
Burgum won the 2016 North Dakota gubernatorial election in a landslide. He was reelected by a wide margin in 2020. In June 2023, Burgum launched a campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He ended his candidacy in early December 2023, and became an advisor on the Trump campaign's energy policy.
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Early life and education
Burgum was born on August 1, 1956, in Arthur, North Dakota, where his grandfather had founded a grain elevator in 1906. He is the son of Katherine (Kilbourne) and Joseph Boyd Burgum. He attended North Dakota State University (NDSU) to earn his undergraduate degree in 1978. During his senior year at NDSU, he applied to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also started a chimney-sweeping business. "The newspaper wrote a story about me as a chimney sweep", he later recalled; it "ran a photo of me sitting on top of an icy chimney in below-freezing weather in Fargo. The story made the AP wire service. I was later told it caused quite a stir in the Stanford admissions office: 'Hey, there's a chimney sweep from North Dakota who's applied.'"
He was accepted to study business at Stanford. While there, he befriended Steve Ballmer, who would later be CEO of Microsoft. During his last year at Stanford, Burgum "spent the whole final quarter on a project team with Ballmer." He received his MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 1980. He later received honorary doctorates from North Dakota State in 2000 and from the University of Mary in 2006.
Business career
Great Plains Software
In March 1983 Burgum mortgaged $250,000 of farmland to provide the seed capital for the accounting software company Great Plains Software in Fargo. He became the company's president in 1984 after leading a small group of family members to buy out the rest of the company. During the 1980s, Fortune magazine often ranked Great Plains Software among the nation's top 100 companies to work for. Burgum grew the company to about 250 employees by 1989 and led it to about $300 million in annual sales and a 1997 IPO, after using the internet to help it expand beyond North Dakota. In 1999 the company acquired Match Data Systems, a development team in the Philippines. In 2001 he sold Great Plains Software to Microsoft for $1.1 billion. He has said he built the company in Fargo because North Dakota State University is there; NDSU acted as a feeder school to employ its stream of engineering students at GPS.
Microsoft
After the sale, Burgum was named Senior Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions Group, the offshoot created from merging Great Plains into the corporation. At Microsoft, he was responsible for making enterprise apps a priority. In 2005, he expressed interest in stepping down as senior vice president to become chairman of Microsoft Business Solutions. But in September 2006, he told journalists that he planned to leave Microsoft entirely by 2007. He was replaced by Satya Nadella; Nadella said Burgum inspired him "to find the soul of Microsoft".
Investment firms
In 2008 Burgum co-founded Arthur Ventures, a venture capital company that invests in businesses involved in technology, life sciences, and clean technologies. The group began operation with a $20 million fund and primarily invested in companies in North Dakota and Minnesota. By 2013 it had expanded its operations into Nebraska, Missouri, Arizona, and Iowa.
Burgum is also the founder of the Kilbourne Group, a real-estate development firm focused on downtown Fargo. In 2013 he created plans to build the tallest building in Fargo—a 23-story mixed-use building—to be named either Block 9 or Dakota Place. It was completed in 2020 as the RDO Building. The company has advocated for a convention center to be built in downtown Fargo. It has acquired and renovated many Fargo properties, including the former St. Mark's Lutheran Church and the former Woodrow Wilson alternative high school. Several of the companies he has invested in are in Fargo.
Board work
Burgum has served on the advisory board for the Stanford Graduate School of Business and was on the board of SuccessFactors during the 2000s, becoming its chairman from 2007 until the 2011 sale of the company to SAP. In 2012 he became the first chairman of the board for Atlassian, after it expanded from its initial board of three members (none of whom served as the official chair). During 2011 and 2014, he twice spent several months as the interim CEO of Intelligent InSites, a company for which he has served as the executive chairman of the board since 2008. In the same year he also became a member of Avalara's board of directors.
Philanthropy
Burgum supports philanthropic causes like the Plains Art Museum. In 2001 he donated a refurbished school building he had acquired in 2000 to North Dakota State University. It was named Renaissance Hall and became home to the university's visual arts department, major components of the architecture and landscape architecture department and the Tri-College University office. In 2008 Burgum started the Doug Burgum Family Fund, which focuses its charitable giving on youth, education and health.
Political career
Early involvement
Burgum endorsed Republican Steve Sydness for one of North Dakota's U.S. Senate seats in 1988. He supported the gubernatorial campaigns of Republicans John Hoeven and Jack Dalrymple in 2008 and 2012.
Governor of North Dakota
In 2016, Burgum announced his candidacy for governor of North Dakota as a Republican. With no formal political experience, he lost the state Republican party's gubernatorial endorsement to longtime attorney general Wayne Stenehjem, but defeated Stenehjem handily in the primary election two months later to claim the nomination. Burgum faced Democrat Marvin Nelson and Libertarian Marty Riske in the November general election and won with over 75% of the vote. He was sworn in as governor on December 15, 2016, alongside running mate Brent Sanford.
Uniquely among Republicans, Burgum has set a goal for North Dakota to become carbon-neutral by 2030. He plans to pursue this goal while maintaining a robust fossil fuel industry, through the use of carbon capture and storage technology to capture and sequester carbon dioxide in the state's geologic formations. He supports the use of carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery, the process by which carbon dioxide is injected into depleted oil fields to boost production. He also supports agricultural practices that store carbon in soil. The announcement of the goal sparked $25 billion in private sector investment, according to remarks he made at the annual meeting of the North Dakota petroleum council. In 2018, he and the North Dakota Department of Transportation established the Vision Zero project. Since then, traffic deaths in North Dakota have reached record lows. Burgum was reelected in 2020 with over 65% of the vote.
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On December 20, 2022, Sanford announced his resignation as lieutenant governor, effective January 3, 2023. Burgum chose Tammy Miller, his chief operating officer, to succeed Sanford. On March 20, 2023, Burgum vetoed a bill to raise the state interstate speed limit to 80 mph. During the 2023 legislative session, he signed a bill that exempts members of the North Dakota National Guard and reserve from paying income tax, and another that provides over $500 million in tax relief.
Burgum and other North Dakota officials have threatened to sue Minnesota over a law that would require the state's electricity to come from sources that do not emit carbon dioxide. Minnesota governor Tim Walz signed the bill on February 7, 2023. In an attempt to mitigate the schoolteacher shortage, Burgum announced the creation of a Teacher Retention and Recruitment task force that would consist of multiple members, Burgum, and the North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction. In October 2023, Burgum condemned Hamas's attack on Israel and noted that 84 North Dakotans who were on a church tour were stranded in Bethlehem as the fighting began. The group made it over the border to Jordan a few days later.
On January 22, 2024, Burgum announced that he would not run for a third term as governor. On February 21, he endorsed Lieutenant Governor Tammy Miller to succeed him.
2024 presidential campaign
In March 2023, Burgum expressed interest in running for president in the 2024 United States presidential election. On June 5, 2023, he posted a video to his Twitter account teasing a "big announcement" for June 7. He formally announced his campaign in The Wall Street Journal the morning of June 7, with the launch of a campaign website and a rally in Fargo scheduled to take place later that day. After his announcement, Burgum began campaigning with multiple stops in Iowa.
Burgum was reported to have spent more money on advertisements than any other presidential candidate. He was endorsed by North Dakota's entire Congressional delegation, U.S. Senators John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer and U.S. Representative Kelly Armstrong. He was also endorsed by actor Josh Duhamel.
On December 4, Burgum announced that he was suspending his campaign, citing frustration with the RNC's high threshold of donations and polling to qualify for debates.
Post-presidential campaign
During his campaign, Burgum said he would not accept the vice presidency or a cabinet position if he was not nominated for president, so he was widely expected at the time to seek a third term as governor in the 2024 North Dakota gubernatorial election. On January 22, 2024, he announced he would not seek a third term as governor of North Dakota.
Before the Iowa caucuses, Burgum endorsed former President Donald Trump. Afterward, he began campaigning for Trump, who praised Burgum and said he wanted him to be an important member of his next administration. Later in an interview, Trump said Burgum would be "very good” as vice president, but reiterated that he had not yet made any decision about his running mate. Burgum spoke on behalf of Trump at the North Dakota caucuses. Trump ally and U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer said Burgum would be a clear front-runner for a cabinet position, most likely Secretary of Energy.
Burgum was reported to be high on Trump's VP shortlist, and on May 2, it was announced Burgum was one of four confirmed candidates for vice president, alongside Senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, and J.D. Vance. Burgum is also the Trump campaign's main advisor on energy policy.
Political positions
Burgum has made comments about President Joe Biden and his performance as president of the United States on Facebook and in public messages.
Burgum endorsed former president Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Trump also endorsed Burgum during each of his gubernatorial elections.
Energy
Burgum has been very vocal on his support for the fossil fuel industry, especially in the Bakken region of western North Dakota. But he also signed a bill to create clean energy sustainable for the state on April 26, 2021. Burgum supports the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Personal life
Burgum married his first wife, Karen Stoker, in 1991. They had three children before divorcing in 2003. In 2016, Burgum married Kathryn Helgaas. As first lady of North Dakota, Kathryn Burgum champions the Recovery Reinvented program on addiction and recovery.
While campaigning for president in 2024, Burgum said in an interview that he likes the music of Keith Urban and enjoys watching the television shows Yellowstone and Ted Lasso.
Electoral history
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Doug Burgum and Brent Sanford | 259,863 | 76.5 | |
| Democratic-NPL | Marvin Nelson and Joan Heckaman | 65,855 | 19.4 | |
| Libertarian | Marty Riske and Joshua Voytek | 13,230 | 3.9 | |
| Write-in | 653 | 0.2 | ||
| Total votes | 339,601 | 100 | ||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Doug Burgum and Brent Sanford (incumbent) | 235,479 | 65.8% | |
| Democratic-NPL | Shelley Lenz and Ben Vig | 90,789 | 25.4% | |
| Libertarian | DuWayne Hendrickson and Joshua Voytek | 13,853 | 3.9% | |
| Write-in | 17,538 | 4.9% | ||
| Total votes | 357,659 | 100% | ||
See also
In Spanish: Doug Burgum para niños
