​How Doug Burgum got his job

By Jim Fuglie

I’m feeling a little mean right now. It doesn’t happen often, but I tend to pay attention to politics and politicians and I’m pretty disappointed in one of our politicians right now. So I’m going to be mean to him.

His name is Doug Burgum.

Just so you know right off the bat, I voted for Doug Burgum. Once. It was in the Primary Election of 2016, and he was running against Wayne Stenehjem for the Republican nomination for North Dakota Governor. I didn’t so much vote for him as I voted against Stenehjem, who I considered a real threat to the North Dakota badlands as he pursued his lawsuit against the federal government to let him build roads in federal wilderness areas. And Burgum owned some ranch land in the badlands, so, what the heck, why not?

Well, it turned out that Burgum won in the fall and immediately climbed into bed with the oil industry, as they marched south from the heart of the Bakken into the heart of the badlands.

But we survived that Doug Burgum.

I’m pretty nervous about surviving the new Doug Burgum. He’s going way past what even Wayne Stenehjem tried to do — and this time on a national scale. Stenehjem just wanted the state of North Dakota to co-manage the federally owned public lands in our state. Burgum seems to think we should just sell our country’s public lands. Or lease them all to the mineral and timber industries.

I read a story last year that said Burgum thinks our public lands are America’s balance sheet. Maybe even the solution to our national debt. But, I suppose, that would mean they would have to be sold to the highest bidder or leased for development.

That’s scary, because as our country dives deeper and deeper into debt, these “businessmen” running our country will be more and more tempted to do just that. Seeing our national parks, our national forests, our national wildlife refuges, as nothing more than “assets” can lead us down a path I don’t even want to start thinking about.

Our state, North Dakota, has a lot to be worried about under that scenario. We have about a million acres of National Grasslands in the western third of our state, and somewhere between 80% and 90% of that is available for mineral leasing. I think I read somewhere that about 75% of that is leased.

It’s the other 25% that I am worried about. The one fourth that is not leased is critical environment or wildlife habitat currently being protected. Secretary Burgum would have us say goodbye to that protection, I’m afraid.

Y’know, our state has always been proud — and justifiably so — when one of our own advances to important federal positions. We puffed up our chests when Tom Kleppe moved from Mayor of Bismarck to United States Congressman to United States Secretary of Interior. That’s right, Burgum isn’t our first Interior Secretary. Gerald Ford put Kleppe there 50 years ago.

Warren Christopher, a kid from little old Scranton, way down in the southwest corner of our state, was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State. That was a big deal. A North Dakotan was fourth in line to the presidency. And then our own former Governor Ed Schafer was in charge of a far more important agency — at least for North Dakota — as President George W. Bush’s Agriculture Secretary. We were rightfully proud of him in that role.

But I’m not so sure we’re going to be proud of Doug Burgum in the end. Especially after reading of his latest venture into the national news in his never-ending quest to be the next President of the United States. I read an article the other day on a Substack post from a group called “Our Public Lands and Waters” that Burgum has taken on the task of being Trump’s main cheerleader in the quest to take over Greenland.

Greenland. Go figure.

The article quoted Burgum as saying this: “In the Interior, we manage all of our territories around the world, our affiliated states. We manage land from Guam to the U.S. Virgin Islands, over 14 time zones,” he said. “We have all the ability to take on that responsibility [of managing Greenland].”

See, if we get Greenland, it would automatically become public land. And who manages our country’s public land? Doug Burgum.

“If Greenland became U.S. territory, the Interior would suddenly oversee the single largest land expansion in American history,” the article went on to say. “Burgum would preside over glaciers, fjords, tundra, and mineral reserves on a scale unmatched by any national park or monument.”

Well, that’s pretty close. Actually, it would be about the same size as Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase. But at least Jefferson’s expansion was already part of our continent. It was just the other half of our country. And remember, Greenland is not green. About 80% of Greenland is permanently covered with ice. You want some “green land?” Well, that would be Iceland, which is mostly green. But don’t tell Trump and Burgum…

So, if we get Greenland, Doug Burgum would become the de facto manager of the Arctic. But I don’t suppose he’ll spend much time there. Just imagine, if every day in Greenland is like today in North Dakota. (It’s snowing like crazy as I write this.)

I also read recently that Burgum has instructed his Fish and Wildlife Service to “review” all the National Wildlife Refuges, apparently to see if we still need them. North Dakota has more of them than any other state, 63 in all. Pretty nice places. Birds and other critters love them. They’re the reason North Dakota is known as “America’s Duck Factory.” We should be pretty concerned about any threats to them. And now Burgum is proposing to rescind the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule, the last protection for another 500 million acres of our public lands.

This is probably not a time for North Dakotans to puff up their chests about having another cabinet secretary. Especially since Trump's comments a while back about why he hired Burgum; Trump claimed that he chose Doug Burgum to serve as his secretary of the Interior after he saw the ex-governor’s wife, Kathryn, riding a horse. The president made the comments in the Oval Office during a meeting of senior officials.

“I saw them riding horses in a video,” Trump said. “And I said, 'Who is that?' I was talking about her, not him.”

Uffda.

Reach contributor Jim Fuglie at jimfuglie920@gmail.com.