Spouse: Kathryn Helgaas, member of John Deere family and a sober advocate for addiction recovery. The Deere tractor supply company made headlines this year when it abandoned its support of LGBTQIA+ Pride parades and withdrew all support from DEI initiatives, after a right-wing pressure campaign led by conservative activist Robby Starbuck.

Qualifications: Elected Governor of North Dakota in 2016; re-elected in 2020.

Disqualifications: A managing partner at Burgum Farm Partnership, he made an unsuccessful run for the GOP presidential nomination, and was reportedly a VP contender. Burgum has expressed doubts about the 2020 vote results, opposes public assistance programs, is a strong pro-fossil fuel advocate who backs Trump’s pipeline project. He is chummy with oil billionaires including Harold G. Hamm of shale oil drilling giant Continental Resources, with whom he has a land deal in North Dakota that netted Burgum $50,000 in royalties since late 2022 while he was governor. Burgum attended a Mar-A-Lago meeting where Trump asked oil and gas executives to donate a million dollars to his campaign in exchange for a promise to curb environmental industry regulations.