The moderate North Dakota governor is a self-made billionaire who worked as a chimney sweep to pay for college.
President-elect Donald Trump on Nov. 14 nominated out-going North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be secretary of the interior.
Burgum, 68, a wealthy former software executive, has been married to Kathryn Helgaas since 2016. He has two sons and a daughter from his 1991–2003 marriage to Karen Stoker. One of his hobbies is hunting, according to his Instagram page.
He will lead a 70,000-employee department that manages national parks, western water conservation, more than 500 million acres of public lands, 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, and 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf, which is certain to experience significant policy shifts geared toward expanding energy development, particularly oil and gas drilling.
Here are five things to know about Burgum.
1. Challenged Trump in GOP Primary
Burgum, largely unknown beyond North Dakota, launched his 2024 presidential campaign on June 7, 2023, with an ad in The Wall Street Journal and a rally in Fargo.
With little name recognition and a relatively short political resume, Burgum spent his time in the spotlight emphasizing his leadership of North Dakota, small-town upbringing, and focus on energy, the economy, and national security.
Burgum contributed millions of his own funds to the campaign, accounting for $12.2 million of the $15.1 million raised between March and September last year, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Filings indicate that a super PAC supporting his candidacy raised more than $11 million in the first half of 2023.
To qualify for debates, Burgum offered anyone who donated $1 to his campaign a $20 gift card as a “Biden Relief Card.” He participated in the first debate in August 2023 despite injuring his Achilles tendon the day before in a basketball game. He resumed his campaign using a knee scooter and a boot.
Following his failure to qualify for the third debate on Nov. 7, 2023, Burgum wrote a “Why I’m Still Running” column in The Jamestown Sun.
“I know what it’s like to be the underdog,” he wrote. “One of the reasons I decided to run for President in the first place was to give a voice to all those people who have been overlooked by elites on both coasts and the politicians in Washington, D.C. It’s why I’m still running for President.”
After failing to qualify for the fourth debate, and due to his lack of standing in polls, Burgum ended his candidacy on Dec. 4, 2023. He became the Trump campaign’s lead energy policy adviser.
2. Was on VP Shortlist, Favorite for DOE Secretary
Burgum, after dropping his campaign and endorsing Trump, was on his former rival’s vice president shortlist along with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).
In stumps, Trump often said Burgum “probably knows more about energy than anybody I know,” including during a New Jersey rally in May, where they each praised the other.
Burgum sat behind Trump during his business records trial in New York. He later told reporters it was a “sham trial,” “scam trial,” and “election interference.”
After the former president named Vance as his running mate, Burgum told various media outlets that Trump referred to him in a phone call as “Mr. Secretary,” sparking speculation the governor would be his administration’s Secretary of Energy or serve as the president’s “energy czar” to coordinate energy policy of several departments.
Burgum stresses “innovation over regulation” and, as with most Republicans, supports repealing parts if not all of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.
“Green New Deal spending” is “something that is just subsidizing China,” Burgum said in an August 2023 GOP debate.
“If we’re going to stop buying oil from the Middle East and start buying batteries from China, we’re just trading OPEC for Sinopec.”
3. Governor Was First Foray Into Politics
Other than endorsing business partner Steve Sydness’s failed bid for one of North Dakota’s U.S. Senate seats in 1988 and 1992, John Hoeven’s winning U.S. Senate campaigns, and Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s 2012 gubernatorial campaign, Burgum was not active in North Dakota politics.
In 2016, he announced his candidacy for governor as a Republican. His announcement was described as “a TED Talk, complete with a slideshow and lacking a lectern,” with the novice not drawing much attention.
The North Dakota Republican Party Committee endorsed longtime state attorney general Wayne Stenehjem, but Burgum handily won the primary election in what was regarded as a stunning upset.
Burgum’s platform touted “reinventing” government, with the state facing a $1 billion revenue shortfall, a data-driven approach to problem-solving, income tax cuts, and attracting capital to the state.
He went on to win the governorship in the general election with more than 75 percent of the vote in 2016. With the state’s finances in the black and North Dakota tied with South Dakota for the lowest unemployment rate in the United States, at 2 percent in 2020, he was overwhelmingly reelected.
Burgum, while a strong oil and gas proponent, also supports carbon capture and other renewable energy initiatives. While not regarded a culture warrior—he rarely raised special issues in his campaigns—in 2023, he signed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, a ban on “explicit sexual material” in public libraries’ children’s collections, and a ban on gender-altering treatments for minors.
Burgum entered office in 2016 during the height of protests over the Dakota Access oil pipeline opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He invited tribal leaders to his office and hosted a listening session on the tribe’s reservation in seeking a compromise.
On Jan. 22, 2024, Burgum announced he would not run for a third term as governor and endorsed Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller to succeed him. She lost the GOP primary to Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), who will assume office in January following his Nov. 5 general election win.
4. One of the Wealthiest Politicians
Burgum is regarded as among the nation’s wealthiest politicians with an estimated net worth of at least $1.1 billion, according to Forbes and numerous other analyses.
After graduating from North Dakota State University in 1978 and earning an MBA from Stanford University in 1980, he worked in Chicago as a McKinsey & Co. management consultant.
After seeing an Apple computer and realizing its potential to shape the future, in March 1983, he mortgaged inherited farmland to invest $250,000 for a 2.5 percent stake in Great Plains Software.
“I mortgaged the farmland, took this huge risk,” he told New Hampshire voters during an October 2023 “Candidate Cafe” sit-down in a Manchester diner. “That was the seed capital that started Great Plains. We started with 10 kids when I joined. There was 10 of us, and we built that.”
He became company president in 1984, growing the company to 250 employees and $300 million in annual sales by 1989. Burgum took the company public in 2001. Microsoft acquired Great Plains Software for $1.1 billion that same year. He stayed on as a vice president and managed Microsoft Business Solutions until retiring in 2007.
“We were an overnight success story–18 years later,” Burgum said during that “Candidate Cafe” in New Hampshire. “So, we had a lot of ups and downs, but we grew slowly and steadily.”
After selling Great Plains Software, Burgum founded two more businesses: Kilbourne Group, a real estate development company in Fargo, and Arthur Ventures, a venture capital company that invests in software companies.
In 2009, Burgum received the Theodore Roosevelt Roughrider Award, joining Lawrence Welk, Roger Maris, Louis L’Amour, Peggy Lee, Phil Jackson, Angie Dickinson, and Eric Sevareid as North Dakotans who achieved national recognition in their fields of endeavor.
5. He Was a Chimney Sweep
Burgum was born in Arthur, a small town 30 miles from Fargo, where his family ran Arthur Farmers Elevator Co. founded by his grandfather in 1906, a grain elevator operation that evolved into an agribusiness that the family still owns.
When he was a high school freshman, his father, who served as an officer on a destroyer during World War II, died from a brain tumor, a shock that he’s said in interviews shaped his life and those of his brother, Bradley, and sister, Barbara.
As a North Dakota State University, he started a chimney-sweeping business in Fargo using a friend’s pickup truck to support himself.
“If there were three chimneys on a house, you had to be willing to climb up on an icy roof in North Dakota in the middle of the winter when it’s, you know, 20-below to do it,” Burgum said. “But if it were three chimneys on their house, you get 120 bucks an hour. And I was making, like, plumber, electrician money. So, it literally helped me pay my way through college.
“This was on the heels of Dick Van Dyke and ‘Mary Poppins,’ the whole Julie Andrews thing. So then, people would always ask me, ‘Do you sing?’ And I‘d be like, ’That’s extra.’”
The Burgum family has donated more than $800,000 to the Plains Art Museum in Fargo to support its Center for Creativity, which is named in honor of Burgum’s mother, Katherine Kilbourne Burgum.
In 2001, Burgum donated a refurbished school building he acquired in 2000 to North Dakota State University. In 2008, he started the Doug Burgum Family Fund, which focuses its charitable giving on youth, education, and health.
Burgum and his wife openly discuss her recovery from alcohol addiction and support the Recovery Reinvented program on addiction and recovery.