Ian Fury continues to get a workout beating back Toby Doeden’s Trumpist lies about Governor Larry Rhoden. In his latest detachment from reality, Doeden tries to paint his runoff opponent as a minion of the “pro-abortion lobby”.
To dismiss that ridiculous claim, Rhoden campaign manager Fury runs out to get anti-abortion queen Leslee Unruh to shoot a campaign video for Rhoden.
The campaign video Fury shot with Unruh and posted to Rhoden’s social media is strangely vague and disjointed, a mishmash of anecdotes without historical detail. She says Rhoden “was one of the first people” to tell her, “You know why you won G? Because you lost the other two and you knew what to do.”
If you live, eat, and breathe abortion politics and ballot measures, you might catch that Unruh is referring to 2024 Amendment G, 2008 Initiated Measure 11, and 2006 Referred Law 6. Amendment G was Rick Weiland’s proposal to reinstate Roe. v. Wade abortion rights in South Dakota. IM 11 and RL 6 were abortion bans backed by Unruh, Rhoden, and other theocrats. The anti-choice crowd scored a big victory in defeating Amendment G, not because they learned a whole lot from their failed campaigns in 2006 and 2008 to ban abortion, but simply because Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other pro-choice groups refused to support Amendment G, largely because they put personal animus and organizational jealousy over the rights of 450,000 South Dakota women.
But Unruh doesn’t explain that campaign; after that blip on Rhoden’s misanalysis of the 2024 Amendment G battle, Fury’s video jumps to some unspecified “big day” in the Legislature and an unspecified story that an unspecified “girl” was coming to tell an unspecified committee to support an unspecified bill.
Through her vague stories, Unruh makes it sound like Larry Rhoden is the first Governor in her 43 years of anti-abortion crusading who has actually supported her side:
…this year, this very year, I’ve never, in all the years, 43 years, gone to the Capitol and had the Governor say to his staff, “You go in and watch those bills.” And it was amazing, and it was like, wow, this is really easy, and this is great, and it was just refreshing. I couldn’t even believe it that we had help from a Governor to actually help us sign—have three bills signed. That’s pro-life. That’s never happened in the state of South Dakota in 43 years of me being involved [Leslee Unruh, campaign video, Rhoden for Governor, posted to YouTube 2026.07.10, timestamp 0:25].
Kristi Noem, Dennis Daugaard, Mike Rounds… 43 years of Republican governors, and we’re supposed to believe that Larry Rhoden is the only one to throw his weight behind anti-abortion bills and welcome Unruh and her fellow right-to-life lobbyists to the Capitol? Give me a break. You can refute Toby Doeden’s utter bullshit without churning out your own excremental exaggeration.
But just like Doeden, Fury is here for the feels, not historical accuracy. The anti-abortion crowd doesn’t need details; they just need Leslee Unruh to remind them that Larry Rhoden has been their guy for three decades… a period during which Toby Doeden, with all his wealth, was absent from the anti-abortion crusade until he decided he wanted to be Governor.
He’s crooked and holier than thou, wow. Why do used car salesmen do so well?