Doug Burgum's Campaign App Doesn't Show A Lot Of Support Outside Of Fargo

Fargo businessman Doug Burgum is currently running the most ridiculously expensive primary campaign our state has ever seen.

We’ll never be able to put a dollar figure to how much all this is costing the candidate. Although state disclosure laws have required him to report just under a million dollars in campaign contributions so far, nothing in the law requires him to report campaign spending. Including what I’m estimating as millions spent out of his own pocket. When I’ve asked Burgum campaign about expenditures, they’ve declined to say.

So allow the presence of a Doug Burgum campaign app in the Apple and Android app stores as evidence of the lengths the candidate is going to.

Curious, I signed up for the app this morning, and it helpfully showed me a map of where Doug Burgum supporters are across the nation. It turns out they’re all over the country, but mostly in the Red River Valley.

Where they’re not is anywhere else in North Dakota (that dot up in Minot is me):

Here’s a zoomed in view of North Dakota, specifically:

It’s a small sample size, sure. As I write this only 87 people have signed up to use the application. Burgum had better hope that the sample isn’t representative, because he’s not going to win a statewide race by just winning Fargo.

I suspect the campaign will get some people from western North Dakota to sign up soon after reading this post.

I’m not actually sure what the point of this application is, other than to show that Burgum’s support isn’t very geographically diverse (at least within North Dakota). It has a countdown clock to primary day, and I guess I can send challenge coins to people? Though I’m not sure what that accomplishes.

The list of people who have sent challenge coins is pretty interesting though. At the top when I checked it was Kirsten Diederich, the former president of the State Board of Higher Education who resigned before the Legislature could spike her re-appointment. She’s currently running as a Democrat for the Legislature in Fargo’s District 46.

I wonder how the Republicans in that district feel about their opponent supporting Burgum?