A homemade parade float depicting Hillary Clinton wearing an orange jumpsuit in a mobile cage, being pelted by water balloons, has caused a stir in the small rural town of Arcadia, Iowa.
Kyle Julin of Manilla, Iowa, created the float and entered it in a July 30 parade celebrating the centennial of the Arcadia Fire Department, according to a Tuesday report in the Carroll Daily Times Herald.
Julin said the idea for the float started as a joke among friends, but by the time of the parade, the joke became reality with the help of his pals, Josh Reetz and Adam Corky, the latter of whom starred as Clinton in the cage.
The float creator said there were few complaints about the float as he drove the parade route.
“Even the police and everybody was positive about it, especially on social media,” he said. “We couldn’t get pictures with some people because of where they work and their political agendas. But, only one group booed us. My consensus from that was 99 percent to 1 percent liked it.”
But the local Democrat Party chairman of the area about two hours northwest of Des Moines said the float was not “helpful” to the already highly charged political climate for 2016. Chairman Tim Tracy added that he feared children would be frightened by the float.
“We saw a lot of children along the parade route,” Tracy told the paper. “Children aren’t politically savvy. It’s sad to imagine that some of “them may have been wondering why they were being mean to that lady and throwing things at her.”
Apparently, few spectators along the parade route were overly worried, though. Julin said they handed out more than 400 water balloons, which were tossed at their jailed Hillary.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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