Longshot 2024 Candidate Wants You to Donate $1 to Him So Badly That He’s Willing to Give You $20 in Return

Doug Burgum, the Jim Gilmore of Lincoln Chafees in the 2024 GOP presidential primary field, is offering a deal that seems too good to be true.

If you donate just $1 to his campaign — and in a cycle full of longshot bids, his is truly the most quixotic — Burgum will send you a $20 gift card back.

“The burden on American families caused by the Democrats is unruly, and Joe Biden is doing nothing to fix it. We want to help, so we’re offering YOU a $20 gift card, and all YOU have to do is contribute $1 to claim it,” reads the North Dakota Governor’s page on WinRed, a Republican fundraising site.

Burgum is calling them “Biden Relief Cards,” and a prompt to do what it takes to receive one is the first thing that pops up when you click on his his campaign website. For those who might wonder why he would agree to such an exchange, consider that the Republican National Committee will only allow candidates with at least 40,000 individual donors to participate in the first primary debate on August 23.

On Twitter, where he has been promoting the deal (“Struggling under Biden’s economy? Let us help. Donate $1 and we’ll send you a $20 gift card in the mail”) and boasting about its effectiveness (“We just launched a short time ago and already we’re giving away about 1,000 Biden Relief Cards per hour”), Burgum specified that they would come in the form of preloaded Visa or Mastercards.

We just launched a short time ago and already we’re giving away about 1,000 Biden Relief Cards per hour. Get yours before it’s too late! https://t.co/IDkW8hGz53

— Doug Burgum (Text “DOUG” to 70177) (@DougBurgum) July 10, 2023

Burgum is estimated to have a net worth in excess of a billion dollars and has signaled a willingness to spend big on his campaign, playing the role of a (relatively) poor and far less well-known Michael Bloomberg.

Outside of his gift card stunt, Burgum has failed to make waves yet in the still-early Republican primary race. He is in last place in the RealClearPolitics average of polls of the field nationally, garnering the support of just 0.1% of voters as of Tuesday.

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