After a prolonged corruption scandal, Connecticut governor John Rowland resigned rather than face certain impeachment by the legislature

National Review, July 12, 2004

* After a prolonged corruption scandal, Connecticut governor John Rowland resigned rather than face certain impeachment by the legislature. Over the previous seven months, daily newspaper reports had revealed a greedy chief executive: There wasn't a free service he would pass up, a concert ticket he wouldn't pocket, a home improvement he wouldn't finagle, a trip he wouldn't accept, with the bills footed by his staff, state contractors, or taxpayers.

Vacations, hot tubs, kitchen cabinets, furnaces, hotel stays, meals, dress shirts, a vintage car--that and more were for the taking, and indeed taken. Once upon a time, the up-and-coming John Rowland proudly bore the Reagan Republican mantle. But after his tenure in Congress in the 1980s, the three-term governor abandoned many conservative beliefs, and by the end he had swapped the Gipper for a new role model: the Grinch, consumed with swiping even the last piece of Hoo Hash. The Grinch's story had a better ending.