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KCC I Eight News. This is *** special presentation. Coffee with the candidates. Hello and welcome to our series, coffee with the candidates. I'm Amanda Rer. Today we're talking with North Dakota, Governor Doug Burham. We're getting to know presidential candidates going to towns across the state so that Iowa voters can ask about the issues they care about. Today. We o in the county, nearly two thirds of active voters in the county are Republican. In 2016 70% of voters in the county cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2020 73% voted for Trump. We sit down with three undecided Republicans from right here in the has the county. They'll ask Governor Berham about the issues they care about over *** cup of coffee. But first, let's take *** look at Berg's background, *** native of Arthur, North Dakota Doug Berham worked as the CEO of Great Plains Software, which he later sold to Microsoft. He also founded *** real estate development firm and *** venture capital firm before he was elected governor of North Dakota. He's served in that role since 2016. I'm here today with North Dakota governor and Republican presidential candidate Doug Berham, thanks for joining us, Amanda. Fantastic to be with you. Well, since entering the race, you have yet to pull above 4% in Iowa. You know, it takes *** lot of money, *** lot of time, *** lot of resources to invest in *** campaign. Why continue to invest that when you're still polling in the single digits? Well, we're, we uh know that these races in Iowa break late. We know that there's *** lot of changes and *** lot of surprises. We know there's *** lot of turns left in the road and we started as the least well known candidate in the state. We're probably still in that position, but we continue to meet people as we crisscross the state and people are very interested in our message and they're very interested in. Wow, there's ***, *** super capable presidential candidate from the Heartland who understands, uh understands Iowa understands Iowa communities, understands Iowa politics, understands how important Iowa is defeating and fueling the world. And, and so we're the response we get from we meet is so encouraging. Everybody says hang in there, keep going. Uh We want you to stay in the race. Uh All the, all we hear is, hey, we wish, we wish we'd heard more of you. We wish you would have had more time to talk at the debate. So we're the encourage what we're getting is part of what's keeping us going when you look at the poll that was released in October from the Des Moines Register NBC news and media com. It shows that your footprint, the number of Iowans considering you actually went down from 23% in August to 19% in October. You know, when you look at that, do you see how do you change that trend around as you get closer to January margin of error? It's about the same. And, uh, and I think it's just *** continue to get out and have people meet and hear our story. And of course, uh, since October, we've had other candidates that have dropped out of the race, there may be more that will continue to drop out. So, and of course, we've got this thing going on with the RNC where they're trying to artificially narrow the field before Iowans even get *** chance to caucus. That's not part of the mandate or the bylaws or the charter of the RNC. And Iowa voters are the ones that get to narrow the field. They're the ones that get to pick presidents, not party bosses, not two people inside the RNC in DC. So out of respect for the Iowa voters, we want to keep charging, we're, we're going to be on the ballot. People going to have an opportunity to caucus for us. They want to learn more about us. Go to Doug berham.com. We'd love to have them be there and look, we'll be in *** community near you soon. Uh So continue to keep learning about us because we, whether it's economy, energy, national security, the things that affect every American and every Iowan, uh we've got the answers and we know we've got the ability to lead to actually get that job done when Iowans are trying to make their decision between candidates. How do you differentiate, differentiate yourself? One and two? I mean, talking about your path forward still, I mean, Donald Trump still has *** commanding lead. Even if you were to overcome Donald Trump, there's still the Santas, there's still Nikki Haley, there's still the vague Ramaswamy and none of their supporters in polling have listed you as *** second choice. So how do you, how do you overcome that? Well, I think you had two questions there first is differentiation, which is easy as people get to know us. They understand. Wow, if our biggest issues related to the economy wouldn't be smart if we actually had someone who's actually worked in the economy, someone who's, who's created jobs, I've created more jobs than all the people on the debate stage combined. Uh and these, you know, great high paying jobs, I've had *** chance to, you know, compete and win in the global markets, doing that with kids from small towns across the Midwest, you know, building super successful global companies. That's what it's going to take for America, someone who's actually actually done this work before and when you talk about this debate stage criteria, maybe the debate stage criteria should be that if you've never worked on *** farm and ranch, you can't be on the debate stage. I mean, not understanding agriculture, not understanding business, not having ever worked today in the private sector. That should actually be like *** check box that you can't be president. We've seen what's happened with Obama and Biden when we put people in, in the office who've never worked in the private sector, we come up with an expanded federal government. If you take someone who's never worked in as *** governor and knows that the job is to shrink the federal government, get the power back to the States and back to the people. So the differentiation is very clear because I'm the only business leader, only business leader in the state. And if you say technology, which it is changing every job, every company in every industry, I'm the only one in this field that has actually worked in technology governor. That is actually all the time that we have for our conversation, but we're going to take things up *** notch. But we'll get to policy. We actually have *** panel of Republicans that are going to ask you questions. Stay with us. We'll be right back with the candidates continues right now. Our conversation with Republican presidential candidate Doug Berham continues at Smokey Row coffee in Oskaloosa. We're joined by three undecided Iowa Republicans from right here in Mahaska County. Welcome back to coffee with the candidates. We're here today with North Dakota governor and Republican presidential candidate Doug Berham. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you Amanda and thanks for hosting and looking forward to this conversation. Great. While we are also here with three Republicans from right here in Mahaska County and all three of you are undecided in who you plan to vote for caucus for in January. That's correct. Well, you'll have some questions for Governor Berham. I may jump in with *** few follow ups as well, but we're going to start here with Pope. You are *** professor of education at William Penn University, right in town. And you have *** about the economy, Governor Berham, I along with my community community members, we have been deeply affected by the rising cost of various essentials. How do you intend to manage the economy to address inflation while maintaining fiscal responsibility, particularly concerning our national debt? What might your plan look like? Well, first of all, I just want to say, you know, thanks for participating and thanks for being *** college professor and thanks for doing it in *** community like like this at William Penn, I mean, schools like that are have such an economic impact locally. Uh And I know you're having an impact on your students. So thank you for that uh on the economy. Uh You know, I've, I've been saying, I think that to be President United States, you actually have to have worked in the economy. I look down on the debate stage, that second debate stage, I've created more jobs than all the other candidates combined. And one of the things I know from building global businesses is that you have to have more revenue than you have expenses. I mean, and as *** family, we have to have more revenue than expenses. And this is just common sense in the federal government right now, the reason we have the debt at $34 trillion is because we spend more than we take in. So you have to do two things. You have to cut spending and you have to raise revenue and there's ways to raise revenue that aren't just raising taxes. The United States has, has 240 million acres of land that Theodore Roosevelt put away across the Bureau of Land Management. Uh all kinds of, of national resources that we have, that's the balance sheet of America. And on that, we've got, we've got timber, we've got oil and gas resources, we've got rare earth minerals. And under the president administration, they're basically saying, oh no, we have to preserve that. Meaning you don't get to set foot on it. You don't cut *** tree, you don't develop oil and gas, you don't develop rare earth minerals, you don't do any and that's just, that's not how it was designed. I mean, they don't belong to unelected bureaucrats. These acres don't want unelected bureaucrats. They belong to all of you. They belong to the nation. And if we're going to shut down our balance sheet and say we're gonna get zero revenue from that because if you develop minerals on federal land, that's revenue to the federal government, it's not having to tax people. It's revenue. And there are billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars of value there. And if we sustainably develop that, and of course, if we don't develop it, then we get our timber and our uranium and our rare earth minerals and our oil and gas from other countries that don't have an EPA and don't develop. So if you care about the environment, you would want to have all of that developed here because we do it cleaner, better and safer. So one is through changing the policies and changing our approach to how we manage the, the actual federal owned assets because this is in places like Wyoming and as the former governor of the Western Governors Association, former chair of Western governors, we have states like Wyoming and, and, and Utah that are over 60% federally owned. These states are hamstrung because they got, they got two thirds of their state. They can't do any resource development on. So drive revenue up spending, get out. We just have to, the federal government is outside of its lane. It does all kinds of stuff that it doesn't, it's not supposed to do. Those should be done by the state. So stop doing things that you're not supposed to do, do it at the state level. States can do it better, cheaper if state doesn't, they can do it at the local level or don't do it at all. And cutting red tape is the other thing, red tape raises the cost of every product that all of you buy. All of us buy every single day, all of these regulations. So if you drive that down and then if we stop the spending, the excess spending, stop printing more money than we're spending, that will drive interest costs down because interest costs are also driving inflation because every business borrows money, families borrow money, then people have to build the cost of interest into it. And then our energy policy, it's not just developing minerals here, but I'd say on the first day of *** Berg administration in addition to cutting red tape, cutting spending, selling energy to our friends and allies versus buying it for enemies, focusing on innovation, not regulation. Those are all the things you do. And when you do that spending goes down, interest rates goes down, inflation comes down, manufacturing comes back and then our economy takes off and we stop empowering foreign dictators in places that produce oil like Venezuela, Iran and Russia with our energy policies, we're actually destabilizing the world. So these three things economy, energy, national security, all interconnected, but it starts with fixing the economy. So it was *** great question to start off our conversation. Thank you. Well, Lauren, you have our next question and Lauren is *** retired air force colonel. Uh, he did hospital administration and he also now owns *** farm and he has *** question for you about farming. And I know you're very familiar with farming. I think that's uh how you started your business. Um, but what would your plan be to help the Iowa farmers and the farmers across the country to include first generation farmers and minority farmers. We see *** lot of, uh, family farms being swallowed up by corporations that are coming, uh, both from overseas and here in the United States. Well, first Lauren, let me just have to say thank you for your service. We're just coming off of Veterans Day and, uh, we know freedom's not free and when someone like you serves, the whole family serves and so just grate grateful for your service. Uh, and thanks for being here today and on your question. First of all, on, uh, foreign ownership, uh, in farmland, we just need to do what we've done in North Dakota. We've had *** law for 100 years that say corporations can't own farmland. I mean, the five of us couldn't decide to farm together in North Dakota. Uh, because we're not related, I mean, we're not immediately related in terms of, uh, you know, being second cousins or closer. So, I mean, even, even like neighbors can't form *** corporation in North Dakota. So it's family farming only in our state. And then we enhance that. That's the way it's been for 100 years. We enhance that. This year we passed new regulations to be clear that foreign governments, foreign political parties. U si mean, us, corporations couldn't before, but now we're clear it's not just us corporations can own land. It's, it's also foreign corporations and foreign governments, foreign political parties. So it's just easy. States can take care of this. You can pass laws and say, you know, ownership has to be, has to be here. You've asked about beginning farmers in North Dakota. We've got *** program for uh you know, beginning farmers loan program. And so we've allocated uh capital through *** special state program that provides low interest loans to help help young and beginning farmers get into it because right now the cost of land is so high and, and with interest rates are high, it's very hard to have these uh you know, *** transition from one family, one family to another. And so we're trying to do that because you know, the average age of *** farmer in North Dakota now is, is mid 60 or higher. And we need to have, we need to encourage the next generation of farmers to come along and do that and we can do that through smart programs because food security is, is national security. And when you talk about farming in Iowa, you can't talk about farming without talking about fuel because Iowa, you know, largest ethanol producing state in the nation biofuels. And this is critical to our future. And again, the same thing, if people say, hey, we want, we want, we want to have low carbon fuels in the future. We want to have sustainable aviation fuel. That's happening right here in the Heartland and it's going to happen in Iowa liquid fuels. There's *** future for liquid fuels that by demonstration is trying to kill liquid fuels in favor of evs. If you're on team ev, you're on team China. If you're on team liquid fuels, you're on team USA and you're on team farmer, you're on team us farmers because us farmers, the easiest thing to decarbonize in the world. Liquid fuel is ethanol. When you cook corn, you create alcohol and you create CO2 and you capture that co two and we can use it for all kinds of things. Whether it's carbonating beverages, we can use it, stick it in greenhouses to have enhanced growing environments. We can use it for enhanced oil recovery like we are in North Dakota. Then you end up with taking the CO two from the ethanol, you use it to do enhanced oil recovery and you end up with carbon negative oil and gas. We don't need s we've got we have an oil company in North Dakota that's greener than Patagonia. So it's innovation, not regulation. And when you do that, I mean, agriculture's got an opportunity to flourish. I mean, the demand for ethanol in ***, in *** world of low carbon fuels could double if that doubled. What would that do to Iowa's economy? Unbelievable what that would do. So we just have to have, you know, the right policies focused on innovation, solve the problems of innovation, not regulation. I mean, it's going to be an exciting future, but we need to have some young farmers be ready to step into these roles. It's gotten, it's gotten so expensive, so much capital needed to farm these days that we've got to create *** pathway for people to enter that market like we're doing in North Dakota. Well, Mary Anne has our next question and she is *** military spouse. She traveled across the country and across the world taking care of her family. She raised three Children. She has *** question for you about being *** military spouse. Yeah, it's been *** military spouse for 39 years. I feel like the military family serves alongside the military member. And I have felt that as *** military spouse, we're treated inferiorly and we're not respected as being an integral part of the service member in their career. What would you do to close that gap? Well, first of all, like Lauren and Marianne, I want to say thank you for your service because it's absolutely true that when one member serves the whole family serves. And I know this is commander in Chief of the North Dakota National Guard in our Guard families and everything we do to support those Guard families, whether they're at home or whether they're deployed or when they come back. Because, you know, losing 22 veterans *** day to completed suicides is *** tragedy and we've got to make sure that we're taking care of our people. Both, you know, when they're in active duty and when they're at home in North Dakota, we've set *** goal to be the most military friendly state in the nation. It's just *** clear, simple, common sense goal. Of course, we've got, you know, the two large bases up there, Grand Forks and Minot air force bases. They're key to the strategic triad of our country in terms of both the bomber and missile wing at minot. But we, we've passed legislation in the last two years. No, no income tax for active military, no income tax for retired military, trailing spouses that are coming to our state don't have to go through licensure requirement. If you've got *** license for whatever you do, addiction counselor, teaching nursing in another state, it can work in North Dakota. We, we welcome and we want to keep those families together, uh, while they're doing that. And then of course, uh, when it's all over, then health care and, and there's been some progress made in, in the va but we, there's work that we have to do to make sure that we're supporting those veterans with health care, including mental health care, uh, as, as, as they're back in. But I wanted to say thank you. My dad was *** World War Two navy vet, uh, passed away when I was *** freshman in high school. My mom raised three kids on her own after dad passed away. And, and uh you know, moms of military members are close to me and, and uh I'm your kids. Your three kids are, I'm sure lucky and nation's lucky and grateful for your service. Thank you. We wanna switch gears *** little bit. Now, talk *** little bit about education. As I mentioned, Pei is *** professor of education and she has the next question. So as of 2022 according to the National assessment of educational progress or NAEP, approximately 65% of fourth grade students were not reading proficiently at their grade level. How have your policies in your state improved education, particularly regarding literacy? Um And if you are elected president, how would you address the critical issue um on *** national scale? Well, two parts to that and again, how we've addressed it in North Dakota. Uh of course, you know that if literature literacy in elementary school starts with exposure that kids have in, in pre K, you know, do they grow up in *** home that has *** lot of books, is somebody reading to them. So there's *** lot of things that are that we have to do to support and encourage families and make sure that they've got uh the tools to be able to do that because, you know, families with higher income have got more books in the house and kids get read to more than, than lower income. And so we just have to make sure that everybody's getting ***, an equal opportunity and start in North Dakota. We've created ***, *** program for four year olds that is specially focused around, around the uh around reading. And then we've also been giving more, more training to our, to our teachers that teach elementary school because they're not every student learns to read the same way. One of our three kids was dyslexic. Nobody figured that out till second grade. I mean, it's, you know, it's *** challenge uh if people have got, you know, reading disabilities, so we have to be able to identify those earlier and have the right, the right corrective action. So there's *** number of things, *** number of things that you can do. But that early childhood education is one of the things that drives the success and outcomes in elementary school. Part of it is we've given our schools also the flexibility because we're still one of the things I've done as governor is I shadow *** student. I call, I call up *** school the night before we don't tell anybody in advance. And I say I'm coming to your school. Give me *** student. I'm going to every class all day tomorrow with them and, and, and I've done that with high school students. Not elementary. Uh, I should try it with elementary sometime with fourth graders. But it's, you know, I mean, I, I've got ***, you know, sophomore, junior senior and I, I go to all of his or her classes with them and, and feel all the anxiety of walking into the lunch room and like, you know, where, where am I gonna sit? I don't know anybody. Uh, you know, all the, all the things go that. But, you know, when I see that, I see that we're still teaching in many cases *** lot like we did when I was in school, which is quite *** few decades ago and that we, when you're trying to move kids for, you know, first grade, second grade, third grade, like when we know that now there's things like some kids, you know, can be advanced in math in second grade and if we don't give them those basic skills, then they're way behind by sixth. But depending on what time of the year we got kids in second grade, that could be 12 months of different age, just like in these, just like when you're playing youth sports and youth hockey, why that kid so good. Well, he's, you know, he's 15% older than the other kid, but it was just their birthday that cut him off. So we, we have to be smarter about this and we've passed *** bunch of red tape reduction for our schools waivers so that the schools can be more flexible about, about, you know, how students learn when they learn where they learn and at all levels even I think for if team based hands on real world learning is where learning is occurring then in places like Iowa and North Dakota, guess what? 4h F fa boys and girls scouts camp far these are places that have merit programs that have accreditation and you, you can get *** cybersecurity degree from F fa I mean, there's all kinds of things you get. We said, why aren't the kids getting credit for that? So again, we passed this thing. So *** learn anywhere bill where if *** kid has got five merit badges in health related first aid, first responder, you know, wilderness first aid in boy scouts, he doesn't have to sit through *** half *** semester of health class. He can take something that's more advanced in *** P class that moves him ahead. So, so those are things that we're doing again. But we've got to allow every one of our schools to be more flexible in how we, you know, get this, this learning going and reading can be *** component of all of that, including career and technical education. Some kids like, I don't want to sit in class. We're pouring *** ton of money in *** career and career and technical because they can learn math and learn reading while they're learning *** skill that's related, that's gonna give them *** great career and no college debt. I heard you say, you know, providing training to the current teachers has, have you thought about providing training also to hire ed or the education preparatory programs? Would that be part of your plan? Uh We, we've been focused more at the state level on for the, for the teacher prep for K 12. Uh you know, on the, on the higher ed uh on the higher ed piece, uh we know diff different set of challenges there, you know, demographics learn everywhere competition, uh technology, I mean, there's four things that are driving change in higher ed and, and one of them is uh the economics don't work if you get *** pile of college debt, but you don't get *** job that helps you pay it off. That's *** problem. Technology which is schools used to be sort of insulated. Now, you've got, you can take anything online anywhere from all the schools. So new forms of competition, demographics, uh certainly in the midwest, there aren't enough kids coming out of high school to keep all the colleges going. So every, you know, drive on, every, everybody's got billboards competing for the same set of high school students. We've got to be having those universities providing for older than average and not just 18 to 22 year olds and not just on campus. And then culturally, we got *** big shift in our country where it used to be, you know, when I was going to school, there was everybody turned on like, I'm the first kid in my family that went to college and my parents saved their whole life so I could do this because this was gonna be life changing. Well, now you go to college and it's life changing because you're buried in part of that $1.6 trillion of debt. And your sibling that went and got ***, you know, ***, ***, you had an opportunity to be ***, an electrician has no debt or they in North Dakota, we've got kids that get the first year of an, of an associate degree in high school through one of our career academies. They get their freshman year, they get, they, they finish their associate degree. And in the fall of the freshman year, I've met kids in October of their freshman year that already have *** $72,000 job offer to be *** power plant manager in the, that company is gonna pay for their college. They have no college debt and they got *** great job. So there's so many different pathways so higher ed different than K 12, *** whole set of challenges. Private schools like William Penn are entrepreneurs, you guys have to raise money and be competitive. The public schools that we drive money into some of them, they haven't had enough competition and they're just waiting for another handout from the state and they've got to lower their costs and improve their services if they're going to be competitive really quickly, time is flying by. We actually only have 30 seconds left. Lauren, you have the next question, probably the final one. You know that you can't turn on *** television radio or news app without seeing *** new poll has just been released. So you also know that Trump de Santi and Haley are at the top of the polls. So million dollar question, if you were to have to depart the candidacy, would you, who would you indoors? Well, Lauren, I just say we're not going anywhere. We're going to be on the ballot for Iowan's competition is great. Uh The, the role of the, the RNC to try to narrow the field before two months before Iowans get *** chance to caucus by including *** national poll requirements to be in the debate stage. Just flies in the face of what Iowans and people in New Hampshire have done. Uh you know, for *** century. I mean, this is Theodore Roosevelt himself fought for people like you to have an opportunity to vote in caucuses and primaries and, and he was fighting against the party bosses, against the big media companies, the newspapers of the day and saying, you don't get to pick who the candidates are. You don't get to narrow the field in the back room and tell us who the candidates are. Let the people rule. It's *** new book that's recently out talking about Theodore Roosevelt winning this battle. And now what do we have, we have two people in the RNC trying to narrow the list. Uh and saying, you know, asking, instead of asking what can you do for the country, they're asking all these questions about, you know, like, why don't you drop out? It's like I say, why, why don't you? And I always say debate, here's debate criteria. If you've never worked on *** farm and ranch, maybe you shouldn't be allowed on the debate stage. Next time, if you've never created *** job in the private sector, maybe you shouldn't be on the debate stage. I mean, pick. So if you never worked in technology, can't be on the debate stage because technology is going to affect everything, the military, the economy, every aspect of government. I mean, you know, have some criteria to eliminate people based on what it takes to do the job, not based on some national polling thing. Everybody in Iowa knows it's late breaking five out of the seven people that have won this thing leads changed in the last month. You know, if people think this is over, then we might as well cancel the NFL season too because maybe somebody knows who's going to win the Super Bowl governor. Hate to stop you there, but we are actually all out of time. That's all we got for our television broadcast. Thank you for joining us to our panelists. Thank you for joining us as well. Our round table discussion with Doug Berham will continue. You can watch our extended conversation on our mobile app or online KCC i.com. Thanks for joining us for coffee with the candidates. Have *** great day.