The Master Debaters on Stage

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum

*Becoming the company's president in 1984, he grew Great Plains into a successful large software company. Burgum sold the

company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001.

* has the support of the fossil fuel industry

* supports a near complete abortion ban

* As governor of North Dakota, he has deployed the National Guard to the southern border with Mexico numerous times

* in crutches with leg injury

former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

* In January 2013, Christie vetoed a New Jersey Legislature bill that would have raised the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50

per hour

* stated in 2023 that he believed that abortion should be a state-by-state issue, and that he would oppose a federal ban

on abortion.

* opposes legalizing the recreational use of marijuana

former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson

* demanded that Republicans who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election and spread Trump's "Big Lie" about the election not be

put in positions of leadership

* signed SB6, a near-total abortion ban

* stated he would block all Syrian refugees from entering the state in response to the November 2015 Paris attacks.

* signed bills into law that prohibited businesses and government facilities from requiring proof of COVID-19

vaccination for staff and customers to enter facilities

former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley

* first Indian (Asia) American to serve in a presidential cabinet

* affirmed the United States's willingness to use military force in response

to further North Korean missile tests

* In April 2016, Haley indicated she would not support legislation introduced by the South Carolina State Senate that would require

transgender individuals to use restrooms based on their gender assigned at birth

Vivek Ramaswamy

* started his campaign claiming that the United States is in the middle of a national identity crisis precipitated by what he

called "new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism, and gender ideology"

* Net Worth of 950 Million

* favors ending U.S. military aid to Ukraine, excluding Ukraine from NATO

* said that he is "not a climate denier" but sees global climate change as "not entirely bad" and has said that "people

should be proud to live a high-carbon lifestyle."

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina

* became the first African-American senator to be elected from the Southern United States since the Reconstruction era.[

believes the Affordable Care Act should be repealed

* would sign a 20-week federal abortion ban into law if elected president

* introduced a bill that would deny food stamps to families whose incomes declined to the point of eligibility because a family

member was participating in a labor strike

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

* met his wife golfing at the driving range at the University of North Florida. ...

* got married at Disney World

* people commented on him being handsome

* baseball star at Yale

* He read The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams, whose advice was to be choosy about the swings one took. “I must have thrown

a half-million pitches to Ron,” his father once said to a reporter from the New Yorker, “and I think he swung at about 500 of them.”

former Vice President Mike Pence

* From 1992 to 1999, Pence hosted an Indiana radio talk show ("The Mike Pence Show") that he described as "Rush Limbaugh on decaf."

* In 1991 Pence wrote an essay called "Confessions of a Negative Campaigner," in which he apologized for the negative campaign ads that

had been used during his bid for the U.S. House of Representatives the previous year.

* Pence is named after his grandfather, Richard Michael Cawley, an Irish immigrant who settled in Chicago after arriving in the United States in 1923.