Politico reports on a creative if expensive way of trying to get on the stage: “The North Dakota governor’s presidential campaign is offering $20 cards to donors who give his campaign as little as $1.” The cards are reportedly being made available to up to 50,000 donors, more than the 40,000 required to qualify under RNC rules.

Update: NYT has more on the legality of Burgum’s plan:

The campaign’s donations-for-cash strategy could raise potential legal concerns, said Paul Ryan, a campaign finance lawyer. Voters who make donations in exchange for gift cards, he said, might be considered straw donors because part or all of their donations are being reimbursed by the campaign.

“Federal law says ‘no person shall make a contribution in the name of another person,’” Mr. Ryan said. “Here, the candidate is making a contribution to himself in the name of all these individual donors.”

Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in election law, said that typically, campaigns ask the Federal Election Commission when engaging in new forms of donations.

The Burgum campaign’s maneuver, he said, “certainly seems novel” and “raises concerns about whether it violates the prohibition on straw donations.”

But some of the legal uncertainty, Mr. Hasen added, stems from the fact that “functionally, campaigns spend a lot of money to get small donations, especially in cases like this where they’re trying to reach a debate threshold.”