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Trail of Governors Adds Likenesses of Rounds, Shotgun, Green, and Boe

The Trail of Governors project unveiled the new statue of former Governor, now U.S. Senator, Marion Michael Rounds yesterday.

Silent, stony… but that’s not it.

Mike Rounds on Merrick Garland

That’s him not moving on the President’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland—very statuesque, but with the added feature where you slip a campaign contribution in the slot in his back and words come out of its mouth.

But where’s the actual…

veiled

What the heck—an umbrella?

Ah, there it is:

Rounds statue

I think the statue is the one in the middle, complete with the box he stands on to look taller while making speeches.

Absolutely unsubstantiated is the rumor that the firearm immortalized with South Dakota’s 31st Governor is Richard Benda’s bronzed shotgun.

Also unveiled yesterday were statues of governors Warren Green and Nils Boe, neither of whose likenesses need to hold a gun to look impressive. Note that Boe’s dog looks much more active than Rounds’s dog, which effectively symbolizes Rounds’s willingness to heel and wait to be told what to do.

26 Comments

  1. jerry 2016-06-25 08:00

    The fella with the gun looks more like Joop, that little wagging pooch there beside him, now that looks like Rounds. See how ol shep, looks up at Joop? He has the look of “hey dude, keep quiet and we can hunt to our heart’s content with all the moolah we stole from the rubes in China and the state of South Dakota, I will be a good boy and you should too”

  2. 96Tears 2016-06-25 08:20

    I dunno. That shotgun looks suspiciously like the one used by Scott Westerhuis, who generated another of Mike Rounds’ legacies as South Dakota’s most crooked governor. It’s interesting that a shotgun was responsible for the public disclosure of two far-reaching payola scams that operated in plain sight during Rounds’ regime. Perhaps there is some merit in this statue after all.

  3. Loren 2016-06-25 10:11

    I thought Rounds legacy would be more along the lines of airplanes, not shotguns!

  4. mike from iowa 2016-06-25 14:27

    Looks like they added about 6 inches of stature. Maybe they had extra bronze around and shared with their cronies.

    I remember hearing Boe being touted as Guv of South Dakota, but the first I truly remember is Kneip from road signs welcoming to drink as an underage iowan.

  5. W R Old Guy 2016-06-25 14:43

    Do you think it would do any good to start a petition to keep the drape over the Rounds statue?

  6. Loren 2016-06-25 15:31

    Old Guy, it’d probably be more effective to put the drape over Rounds!

  7. Rorschach 2016-06-25 16:13

    The one thing that jumps out at me is that neither the face nor the body of the statue look at all like Mike Rounds. Not even like Mike Rounds when he was governor 2003 – 2011. Without an inscription, I would be standing in front of that statue wondering who it’s supposed to be. I just plain don’t see the likeness there. I don’t know who that statue is, but it’s not Mike Rounds. Probably looks a lot like the sculptor is my guess.

  8. grudznick 2016-06-26 07:28

    Great snark, Mr. H. You have indeed taken the title of South Dakota’s snarkiest political blog away.

    It will serve you well in the legislatures.

  9. chris 2016-06-26 10:02

    He looks better with the burqa on.

  10. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-26 10:06

    Ror, I agree the likeness is not strong. Perhaps that’s just a problem of casting Mike Rounds in a hard, durable substance.

    WR, Chris, perhaps instead of a formal petition for drapage, we just need to organize a dedicated group of volunteers who will visit the Capitol on a regular basis and toss some thin scrap of cloth over our historical disgrace.

  11. mike from iowa 2016-06-26 10:23

    Plaster the bastar’ with subpoenas.

  12. MK 2016-06-26 10:25

    And, this is how they spend our hard earned tax dollars. Pathetic.

  13. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-26 10:56

    Easy, MK—the Trail of Governors is a privately funded project. Rich people can throw their money away on whatever they see fit.

    Each statute costs $68,000. Half of the funding for the quasi-likeness of Marion Michael Rounds came from “Friends and Family of Governor M. Michael Rounds; a quarter came from Fischer Rounds and Associates; the last quarter came from “Families of Steve and Trace Beck—Beck Motor Company.”

  14. W R Old Guy 2016-06-26 12:07

    How about we pay Rounds to play a living history statue (making sure the gun is not loaded) for 40 hours a week and sent the statue to Washington. It would be cheaper and do far less damage to our country.

  15. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-26 14:38

    Right on, WR! And it would achieve just as much.

  16. Douglas Wiken 2016-06-26 17:58

    Rounds should be a statue with an extended palms up open hand waiting for an insurance payment or a partisan contribution. And it should be permanently in a pool of water about a foot deep to remind everybody of the stupidity of building a home a few inches above a nearly flat flood plane.

  17. Roger Cornelius 2016-06-26 18:55

    Does Pierre have pigeons?

  18. leslie 2016-06-26 19:08

    love it wiken!! positively wicked. a stained water ring right below his knobby knees. hehaheha

  19. leslie 2016-06-26 19:11

    $68k. hmmmm. 30-90 SD resident deaths annually because mike and denny refused ACA health care for everyone in the state. x’s 5 years…450 deaths.

  20. clcjm 2016-06-27 23:25

    The thing I find most disturbing is the inclusion of the shotgun! With the death toll from the EB5 and Gearup being at 7 and all by shotgun, it seems intimidating to me!

  21. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-06-28 07:06

    Agreed. That shotgun now immortalizes the fatal corruption that took root in Rounds’s administration.

Comments are closed.