My friend K.C. was admiring Deborah Butterfield’s two spectral horses in the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

The statues are bronze castings of pieces of wood you might find on a beach – assorted tree limbs and boards that were tossed about in the surf. Butterfield assembles the random scraps into magnificent looking horses.

“You know these are both mares,” K.C. said.

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“Simple,” he replied. “I read that Butterfield regards all her horses as females.”

“No stallions?” I said.

“She said she creates big, beautiful mares that are as strong and imposing as stallions but capable of creation and nourishing life,” K.C. said.

“Interesting concept,” I said.

“This will sound strange,” he said, “but her mares are a metaphor for what just happened in state government.”

I must have looked puzzled, because he said: “Think of it this way.”

Pointing to the larger horse, he said: “This one is the governor, Kim Reynolds, and this one is our new lieutenant governor, Chris Cournoyer.”

“Are you saying Cournoyer is a mini-Kim?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “One Kim Reynolds is enough. But it will be interesting to see how this plays out.”

I said: “Judging from how long it took Reynolds to name a successor for Adam Gregg,” the lieutenant governor, who resigned in September 2024, “Cournoyer wasn’t her first choice.

“I heard she was waiting until after the election to offer the job to either Zach Nunn or Mariannette Miller Meeks, if one of them got defeated in their congressional reelection campaigns,” I said.

“They both won, so neither needed the job,” K.C. said. “Actually, I’m not sure either would have taken it, anyway. Let’s face it, being lieutenant governor is a low-pay, long-hours, no-win job. That’s why Gregg quit.”

“His salary was $103,000, which is poor pay for someone his age, with his abilities. There are 14 people in the governor’s office who make more. The guy Gregg replaced as head of the Iowa Bankers Association made more than $600,000,” K.C. added.

“At just $103,000, Reynolds couldn’t attract any serious business people,” K.C. said. “The best she could hope for was someone eager to climb the political ladder, and that’s what she got.

“Cournoyer was a two-term state senator and a former school board member from Scott County. She was also a reserve deputy sheriff and a substitute teacher. Reynolds called her ‘an expert in technology and AI.’

“The truth is she got her computer science degree in 1992, which was pretty much before AOL, and she had her own business designing websites.”

“Isn’t that all done in the cloud now?” I asked.

“When she first ran for the Iowa Senate in 2018, she was in favor of giving teachers raises of more than the 1% Republicans were offering,” K.C. continued. “But given her support for Reynolds’ education cuts, that must no longer be true.

“The most interesting part of her resume,” he said, “is that in 2018, she expected to run against Democrat Rita Hart. But Fred Hubbell tapped Hart for his running mate in his unsuccessful race against Reynolds, and Cournoyer beat a no-name Democrat.

“Come to think of it,” K.C. said as he turned to walk away, “Roger Jepsen was from Scott County when he was Bob Ray’s lieutenant governor. Must be something in the water over there that produces lieutenant governors.”