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Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota knows that many people, including powerful voices in his own party, think he should drop out of the Republican presidential primary, abandoning his quixotic candidacy so he can gain momentum behind a rival to Donald J. Trump. and, ultimately, the president. Biden.
“It seems like they’re trying to do the voters’ job,” he said in an interview Saturday. But Burgum is committed to staying on the ballot in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he says he regularly encounters people eager to vote for him. “They are the ones who are going to decide how the field is narrowed, not some other group,” he said.
Burgum, 67, was sitting in a stately conference room, somewhere in the carpeted labyrinth of a convention center in Las Vegas, which was hosting a major meeting of Jewish donors. Less than an hour earlier, in an upstairs ballroom, former Vice President Mike Pence had dropped out of the race, bowing to the reality that he was short on votes and running out of money.
Burgum’s reality is different in at least one critical way: Although he barely polls 1 percent in Iowa polls, his net worth is in the hundreds of millions. He has largely self-funded his campaign, lending him more than $12 million; another $3 million comes from donations, according to the campaign’s most recent filing.
He can afford to be quixotic. By the end of September, her campaign had spent $12.9 million, more than the campaigns of Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and Pence combined. About a third of that time he spent on television advertising.
It’s a testament to the power of private wealth to sustain a campaign and elevate a largely unknown, business-minded conservative from a largely rural American state to the national stage (or, at least, to the edge of the stage).
“I think he brings a perspective and experience that resonates with many voters,” said Miles D. White, former chairman and CEO of Abbott Laboratories and a longtime friend of Burgum. “I think the initial process doesn’t provide a lot of opportunities to demonstrate it.”
White, who donated $2 million to a super PAC backing Burgum, said Burgum’s financial resources allowed him to remain in office and raise awareness of himself as a potential alternative to Trump, outside the confines of the Trump stage. debate.
“Their biggest challenge is becoming nationally known and getting noticed, which takes a lot of time, a lot of advertising, which takes a lot of funding,” White said.
Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist, said most candidates, at this point, were simply helping Trump. On Monday, in a editorial in El BaluarteHe asked that all of them, except Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and governor of South Carolina, drop out of school.
“I like Burgum,” Murphy said in an interview. “He is in a desperate battle with the margin of error in the polls. Because there is so much at stake with Trump, he has to step back.”
He added: “When your argument is, ‘Let me burn in Iowa, where I will do collateral damage to others,’ you have no argument.”
Burgum said he first sought the governor’s seat in 2015 because he felt he could have a greater impact on North Dakota from Bismark than from his privileged position in private business. The same thing motivated him to seek the presidency, but he first had to persuade his 25-year-old son, he said, who was worried about the attention it would bring to his family.
Finally, his son told him, “You should run, because my friends would have someone to vote for, instead of voting against.” As he told the story, Mr. Burgum began to cry.
Friends from the business community have also joined in to support. The super PAC backing him, called Best of America, had received more than $11 million as of the end of June from about two dozen wealthy supporters, including people with ties to his business world.
“Anyone who has made a significant donation so far is someone who has known us for a long time,” Mr. Burgum said. “Because they say, okay, this is the real deal.”
Burgum entered the race in June on a platform that focused on his economic acumen and business history as a software executive, as well as his conservative record as governor.
“People crave leadership, and for them leadership doesn’t mean spending a life as a career politician in North Dakota,” he said. “It means someone who has the characteristics of integrity and honesty. Someone you can trust and someone who is willing to take risks, someone who can take a leap and not know where they are going to land.”
And he added, referring to his competitors: “In fact, I have created more jobs than everyone else on that stage combined, in the private sector.”
Since entering the race, Burgum has spent heavily to introduce himself to voters and drum up support.
In his first nominating states, Mr. Burgum’s business bona fides, horseback riding skills and distinctive eyebrows have been fixtures on television, set against the scenic backdrop of North Dakota; He said he saw his campaign in part as an opportunity to introduce his state to the rest of the country.
(As for his eyebrows, Burgum attributes them to his mother’s side of the family and recognizes the striking resemblance to comedian Eugene Levy. Along with his flowing hair, they receive a lot of attention during the election campaign: “If the only people who voted were women over 75 or 80 years old, then we would have it insured,” he said).
Burgum’s campaign has purchased $4.3 million in local and national advertising time, according to an analysis by AdImpact, a media tracking company. Since July, the super PAC backing him has bought nearly $13 million in advertising time.
The PAC’s ads describe him as “the only conservative business leader running for president,” and promise he can bring “small-town common sense to Washington, DC.”
The super PAC’s advertising spending is the fifth-highest in the race, according to AdImpact’s analysis, which also includes advertising outlays in the coming weeks. Never Back Down, a super PAC backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has spent $35.6 million. A super PAC for Trump has spent $27.6 million; one for Ms. Haley, $22.8 million; and one for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, $19.8 million.
Before the first debate in late August, Burgum’s campaign offered $20 gift cards to anyone who donated a dollar to his campaign in order to reach the threshold of 40,000 individual donors to earn a spot on stage.
The tactic worked. Then, on the day of the debate, she tore her Achilles tendon in a basketball game with his assistants. He showed up anyway. Two months later, he still uses a scooter to get around.
There is still one big hurdle ahead: While Burgum’s campaign has the required number of donors, it has not yet reached the Republican National Committee’s voting threshold for the third Republican debate, which will be held next week in Miami.
He described the threshold as an arbitrary bar set by the party leadership. “You might get a reduction, but you might not produce what Iowa or New Hampshire would produce, where people are really investing time,” he said.