Over in that other Washington publication I write for, I take a look at Doug Burgum — ahem, you know, the North Dakota GOP governor who’s running for president — but conclude with the argument that being a pretty good lesser-known governor is unlikely to be enough for a competitive presidential bid, never mind a winning one.
If you want your party’s presidential nomination, it isn’t enough to have a good record. A lot of candidates who look promising on paper end up withdrawing after being stuck in single digits for months or flopping in Iowa or New Hampshire. Voters get one shot, and they almost invariably go with their favorite candidate, not a dark-horse option. One day, maybe ranked-choice voting will open up the possibilities.
Despite sharing some similarities, Sununu and Burgum came down differently on making a 2024 run. Sununu declined to chase the nomination because he worried about inadvertently helping Trump win the nomination. Maybe Burgum felt freer to run because he knows deep down that even if he manages to raise his national profile a little, his candidacy will be so inconsequential that it won’t affect the final outcome.
As discussed on today’s Three Martini Lunch podcast, one refrain of the lesser-known candidates is that the relatively-unknown Georgia governor Jimmy Carter won in 1976 and the lesser-known Arkansas governor Bill Clinton won in 1992. I regret to inform everyone that those races were 47 and 31 years ago, respectively, and that all of us are a lot older now. The country, the electorate, the media environment, and the process and style of campaigns have all changed dramatically. There is little reason to think that through sheer force of personality, a relatively obscure lawmaker can catapult to frontrunner status in just a few months.