Douglas Burns
Special for The Denison Free Press

Republican presidential candidate Doug Burgum, a North Dakotan with rural roots, says energy independence and strategies to develop a strong economy are central features of his campaign.

What’s more, the North Dakotan says he understands rural America as well as anyone campaigning for the Oval Office.

“I’m just a small-town kid,” Burgum says.

Burgum hails from Arthur, North Dakota, a community of about 300 people. He worked his way through college, North Dakota State University, sweeping chimneys, and went on to earn a master’s in business administration from Stanford University and founded a tech company, Great Plains Software, an organization so successful that Microsoft acquired it.

He understands how the economy intersects with the lives of Americans, from people in the trades to entrepreneurs, Burgum said.

“Inflation, among all the ills, is the worst one,” the governor of North Dakota said in Denison during a meeting with local Republicans at Bella Sera restaurant.

Inflation, in essence, saps money from people’s savings accounts as they are sleeping - it’s more than just the higher cost of milk and gas in the waking and working hours, Burgum said.

Burgum said the United States cannot retreat into isolationism as the American economy is so closely tied to those of other nations.

“When we have the world’s largest economy, we make a lot of stuff that other people buy,” Burgum said.

Of the United States’ $25 trillion economy about half of it is tied to foreign trade.

“We feed and fuel the world, that’s what we do,” Burgum said.

Burgum said the United States’ largest threat is China. But U.S. innovators have the firepower to win the economic battle, he said.

“If you want American manufacturing jobs to come back to this country, if you want to have lower inflation, if you want to have the best possible things for the environment, then every ounce of electricity, every electron, ought to be made here, not someplace else,” Burgum said. “We do it cleaner, safer, smarter, better than anyone else in the world.”

Long-time Republican activist Gwen Ecklund of Denison said Burgum is impressive.

“I think that he has some really vast knowledge and insight that is valuable, and that we are not necessarily hearing from other candidates,” Ecklund, the former Crawford County Republican chair who now leads that organization’s women’s group, said. “I think people will give him a look.”

“I think he’s worth looking at,” she added.

Bob Quandt of Denison said Burgum has good ideas.

“I think he’s a very smart man,” he said.

Quandt thinks Burgum makes a strong case for what Quandt sees as President Biden’s shortcomings on the economy and management of the southern border.

Both Quandt and Ecklund remain undecided in the presidential nominating process.

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