Rounds Brushes Off Fargen as Inexperienced Freshman

Remember that really nice guy we liked so much more than those mean and nasty fellas, Kirby and Barnett?

Governor M. Michael Rounds graces the editorial page of Monday's Madison Daily Leader (Jon! you really need to put these letters online!) with a snarky response to District 8 Representative Mitch Fargen's criticism of the governor in last week's paper. I don't have a copy in front of me, so lengthy excerpts will have to wait. But the governor's several-inch response boils down to calling Fargen an inexperienced freshman who needs to learn his place.

I get a bit cranky when I hear that kind of talk from veteran legislators. The state legislature is not high school or a Greek frathouse. Sure, Mitch is a freshman legislator. But he is also the elected representative of over 20,000 South Dakota citizens. Whether he has served that role for eight weeks or eight years, his voice—our voice—matters as much as anyone else's in Pierre. Fargen appears to already know his proper place: to do the job we elected him to do, to speak up and fight for our interests, interests that aren't served terribly well by a governor who would tax the poor and cut funding for education, Birth to 3, and the arts (and, for the many Madisonians for whom this is a big deal, just won't get behind the Highway 34 expansion, no matter how many stickers John Goeman hands out).

Fargen criticizes the governor on policy; Rounds still thinks he's homecoming king. Who'd got the guts again?