Funeral services are to be held this morning in Sioux Falls for Bill Janklow, the sometimes-populist four-term Republican governor of South Dakota from 1979 to 2003.

When Janklow died last week at 72 from brain cancer, most of the obituaries mentioned the colorful arguments that he and former Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich had over the years.

At the root of these arguments were South Dakota's efforts to lure Minnesota businesses to their low-tax state.

Most of the insults between the two governors went something like this public exchange in the early 1980s.

house.gov

Bill Janklow

Janklow: "The best thing I have going for me to sell South Dakota is Rudy Perpich. The more he keeps shooting off his mouth, the better my state's going to develop."

Perpich: "South Dakota is 50th in everything."

This was colorful, headline-making stuff. But, in the often hostile climate of our political times, it might be useful to focus on the fact that over time, the relationship between the two governors dramatically changed.

Key to that change was a 1983 trip to China. Janklow had a rare, life-threatening allergy related to cold weather, so wherever he went, there was someone charged with knowing how to use a drug that would be injected in case of an emergency. On the trip to China with a handful of other governors, Perpich was charged with carrying the injection kit because he was a dentist by training.

The two joked about Perpich holding this position of power. Perpich, laughing, grumbled to Janklow that if the South Dakota governor died on the trip, Perpich would be blamed.

Minnesota Historical Society

Rudy Perpich

But the two later said that during this trip, the two also became great friends, despite their political differences.

"He's a good person," Janklow said in an interview of his relationship to Perpich. "We're still competitors, but we're pals."

After Janklow left the governor's office — and before his successful run for Congress — Perpich appointed Janklow to a Minnesota rural development board. (At the time, Janklow, an attorney, kept an apartment in Minneapolis, as well as his home near Sioux Falls.)

The most telling aspect of their relationship, though, came at the time of Perpich's death in 1995. Janklow gave one of the eulogies at Perpich's funeral.