Doug Burgum's million dollar gift card gambit has paid incredible dividends

The North Dakota governor continues to cash in on the ultimate assymetric bet.

Prior to July 2023, the name Doug Burgum barely registered to any Americans outside of North Dakota. Given his low profile leadership style and the reality of being the head honcho in one of America’s least populated states, even the most politically astute Americans were completely unaware of his existence.

Throughout the Great Plains, Burgum styled himself as a governor characterized by a pragmatism and a politically passive tone that carried over from his days as a senior executive at Microsoft. Everything pointed to the stint in Bismarck being the absolute height of Burgum’s political aspirations.

Yet the notoriously low profile governor decided to pivot into the spotlight, when in June of last year, he announced that he was running for president of the United States.

When Governor Burgum first threw his hat in the ring, it immediately seemed like a hopeless ploy that has become all too common among men with big egos and seemingly deranged ambitions. Sure it would be wonderful to be able to qualify for the presidential debates, which would grant him the valuable media coverage and the national stage to bolster his extremely limited national stature. But with limited charisma, and the fact that Burgum was running on a relatively guarded platform of “economy, energy and national security,” there was nothing outside of his wallet that seemed to separate him from the field.

At the time, The New York Times surveyed the landscape in North Dakota and reported:

“Even Mr. Burgum’s most ardent supporters at the rally expressed doubts that the governor of a state of 775,000 could qualify for the all-important primary debates, a bar that now requires 40,000 unique donors and 1 percent in national Republican polls.”

But nobody saw his next move coming.

Governor Burgum pulled off one of the most brilliant asymmetric bets in the history of modern politics. He spent almost a million dollars of his own campaign money to purchase his ticket onto the stage.

For the first time in history Americans could *make money* simply by donating to a political campaign. In exchange for a $1 donation, donors received a $20 Visa or Mastercard gift card that was mailed to their address by the Burgum campaign. He creatively labeled the voucher the “Biden Economic Relief Card.”

The gift card gambit succeeded, and Burgum was able to secure the unique donor roster that once seemed pretty much impossible to obtain in such a short time period. Burgum went from a political nobody to a somebody overnight.

After his short stint on the presidential campaign trail, Burgum leveraged his newfound national stature to link up with the Trump campaign, dedicating his time and energy to the mission of defeating Joe Biden in 2024. And of course, Burgum has waged an all out internal effort to convince President Trump that he would be the best pick for his ticket.

According to prediction markets, as of June 25, 2024, Governor Burgum is now the significant favorite to become Trump’s vice president.

Sources within the Trump campaign told The Dossier on Tuesday that although President Trump has said that he knows who his VP pick will be, he has continued to keep that name guarded in a circle of trust of one.

The North Dakota governor will let his term expire in December, as he hopes to continue to cash in on the ultimate assymetric bet he made last year. Even if Burgum doesn’t get selected for the VP slot, he will in all likelihood end up in the next presidential cabinet, should the GOP ticket win the day in November.