Editing H. Carl McCall (section)

====Letterhead controversy====
In October 2002, McCall released 61 letters he had written on state letterhead to heads of companies in which the state pension fund owned large blocks of stock, asking them to review enclosed resumes of his relatives and other job-seekers.

Some of the letters referred to the size of the state's ownership interest in the corporation targeted, which critics claimed amounted to a veiled threat to punish companies that didn't hire his relatives. A Quinnipiac poll released October 16 showed that two-thirds of likely voters were aware of the letters and of those more than a fifth were less likely to vote for McCall as a result.

McCall defended the letters. Although he did issue a statement regretting the "appearance" and "impression" of the letters he wrote on government stationery, he maintained that he "never sought to leverage my public position nor mix my government role with my personal and professional relationship" in the letters.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E0DC153AF930A25753C1A9649C8B63|title=COPING; Small Favors, Large Stories, Tough Questions|journal=The New York Times|first=Anemona|last=Hartocollis|date=2002-10-13}}</ref> McCall's daughter, Marci, was hired by Verizon, which received such a letter, but was subsequently fired for using her company credit card to pay for substantial personal expenditures. Charges of larceny against her were dropped after some reimbursement to Verizon, and she was then hired as a marketer by McCall's running mate, Dennis Mehiel.