M. Jodi Rell, the calm and reassuring Republican second-in-command who steadied Connecticut after a corruption scandal forced the resignation of Gov. John G. Rowland on July 1, 2004, died Wednesday. She was 78. She died in a Florida hospital after a brief illness, her family announced Thursday. “She became governor almost reluctantly and at a time of great turmoil, and she used her newly acquired authority to bring stability to state government in a way that was very much needed at the time, focusing on strengthening state ethics laws and rebuilding the trust of the residents of our state,” Gov. Ned Lamont said.  He ordered flags lowered to half staff. “Connecticut has lost a trailblazing political leader and treasured public servant who served our state with dedication and distinction for nearly three decades,” Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said. Rell took office as a little-known lieutenant governor, but immediately became Connecticut’s most popular politician, a status she enjoyed until leaving office in January 2011. Rell’s extraordinarily long political honeymoon stretched beyond finishing the last two years of Rowland’s third term to winning an election to a term in her own right with 63% of the vote in 2006, a modern record. She was a moderate Republican, a supporter of abortion rights who was a member of the General Assembly when it voted to codify in state law the tenets of Roe v. Wade in 1990. As governor, she signed a bill legalizing the civil unions of same-sex couples, a step that lead to a court case resulting in gay marriage. She opted against seeking a second full term, leaving office as Connecticut struggled with a gaping budget shortfall after the recession of 2008. Rell was a groundbreaker as only the second woman to serve as governor, and the first Republican. But she offered a fatalistic view of her ascension and the role she would play. “My mother used to have this expression, I’m sure all mothers do: ‘You’re at any given place at any time for a reason,’ ” Rell said. When her official portrait was unveiled in 2013 at the State Library across the street from the state Capitol, she wryly noted her status as the second woman in the gallery. “I have to tell you, I’m a little bit pleased to help Ella take on a few of these men,” Rell said, casting an eye toward portraits of many of her 86 predecessors, all but one a man. Her portrait will hang near the sole exception, Ella T. Grasso. At the ceremony, she was praised for her leadership in a difficult time. “We all know that she took over under very difficult times,” said John McKinney, the former Senate minority leader. “We all know that when she took over, the confidence of the people of Connecticut in their government, in their office of the governor, was as low as it’s ever been and as low as it possibly could be.” Her legacy was less what she did than how she did it, he said. “She governed with class and character,” McKinney said. “That to me is the great legacy of Jodi Rell. We cannot do what we do, we cannot serve the people of Connecticut, if they don’t trust and believe in their government leaders. She restored that trust.” Rell expressed her dismay at the state of contemporary politics, then and in later public events, including one at the Rell Center at the University of Hartford with Lamont. “I miss some of the people, but I don’t miss the politics,” Rell said. Former CT Gov. Jodi Rell and Gov. Ned Lamont at a Governors Conversation hosted by Lucy Nalpathanchil and CT Public at University of Hartford on Sept. 14, 2023. Credit: Tony Spinelli / CT Public Lamont said he enjoyed his talks with Rell. “Her style of leadership was not fabricated or manipulated in any way. The Jodi Rell that the people of Connecticut saw in public was the Jodi Rell that she was in real life – calm, rational, caring, approachable, and devoted to her family and to her state,” Lamont said. Other tributes followed quickly. “We have all lost a dear friend and wonderful human being in the sad passing of former Gov. Jodi Rell. Most people I have spoken with were truly shocked by the news,” said House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford. “But we can be heartened by the warm memories we shared of Jodi Rell who served her beloved state and hometown of Brookfield with dignity, class and honor. Her sunny demeanor and outlook will be missed but never forgotten.” “Gov. Rell took over at a dark time in Connecticut, in the wake of former Gov. Rowland resigning as he was facing impeachment,” said her successor, Dannel P. Malloy. “She steadied the ship, and returned a sense of decency and honesty to state government at a time when both were sorely needed. Gov. Rell loved Connecticut, and was a dedicated, honest and kind public servant. “Jodi Rell was exactly what the state of Connecticut and, more importantly, the people of Connecticut needed in 2004 when she assumed the office of governor. She brought a level of calm and focus, not only to the state Capitol, but to the state,” said Ben Proto, the Republican state chairman. The state Senate Republican minority caucus, which is led by Sen. Stephen Harding of Brookfield, issued a statement: “Jodi Rell loved Connecticut, she loved public service, and she served our state with dignity and grace.  As our 87th governor, she had an incredible connection with Connecticut residents that helped her lead us through some very difficult days.  She was the genuine article.” Gov. M. Jodi Rell in 2010. Credit: CTMirror Three days before her first Christmas as governor in 2004, Rell was diagnosed with breast cancer. Nine days after a mastectomy, she delivered a State of the State address to a joint session of the General Assembly. The ovation was heartfelt, thunderous and sustained. Rell negotiated ethics reforms with the Democratic majority in 2005, including the public financing of campaigns, which she accepted only as a condition of other reforms, most notably a ban on campaign contributions from state contractors. “I hated public financing. I hated the idea of it. But if we were going to get the other things, you had to give a little,” Rell said. Her successor, Malloy, was the first statewide candidate to qualify for public financing in a statewide election. Her first months as governor were so pitch-perfect that one gleeful Republican operative called her the GOP’s own “Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way”– a comparison that flustered her during an interview in 2004. “I am honored that people respect the job I am doing, but don’t make me anything better than the lady next door. I am not perfect. My self-doubts are the same as your self-doubts,” Rell told her male interviewer. “You probably would never voice them. Most men don’t. But you know we women have a tendency to say, ‘Oh God, did I do that right? Am I OK?” Rell did not lack for toughness at times. She fired four commissioners soon after taking office and forced out a fifth she saw as failing. As governor, Rell also had the task for reviewing the case of serial killer Michael Ross, letting his execution go forward. “She made it easy to to write her speeches, because she always seemed to know exactly what she wanted to say,” said Judd Everhart, the former Associated Press reporter who was her press secretary in 2005 and 2006. “If she thought you had come up short on a press release, or if she thought a draft quote was too flip, she’d give you the look.” The look was a glance over her reading glasses, eyebrows raised. “She didn’t need to say anything — you got the message,” Everhart said. The recession of 2008 made the last half of her full term difficult. Her administration and the state struggled as the economy stagnated and the estimated budget gap grew to more than $3.5 billion. Those who vied to succeed her were sharply critical, including those in her own party. “It’s politics, and I understand that. I understand that when I’m gone, there are going to be more shots,” Rell told the Connecticut Mirror shortly before leaving office. “I think the public understands it. And I hope the press understands.” She noted that Connecticut was one of 47 states in crisis. “All of the states are suffering right now from the worst national recession we have had since the Great Depression,” Rell said. “And I think the public recognizes that it’s not any one individual’s fault. It’s not any one party’s fault. Frankly I think it brings to the surface that we need to work, really work, together if we are going to address it.” Rell’s husband, Lou Rell, a former Navy aviator and commercial airline pilot, died in 2014 at age 73. He was a booster of her career, encouraging her to run for the General Assembly from Brookfield, where they lived and raised two children. Her survivors include her son, Michael, and daughter, Meredith, and several grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were incomplete. Mary Carolyn Reavis Rell was born in Norfolk, Va., Jodi was a nickname. She attended Old Dominion University, but left without graduating to marry Lou. They eventually settled in Brookfield, a popular locale for airline pilots based in New York. Her rise in politics was typical of women of her generation: She volunteered on local campaigns, stuffing envelopes and keeping the books. In 1984, David Smith, an airline pilot who had been representing Brookfield and neighboring Bethel in the General Assembly, told her he would not seek another term and it was her turn to run. Rell immediately balked. “She said, “Absolutely not, I couldn’t do it,” Smith recalled in late 2004 for a profile in the Hartford Courant’s Northeast Magazine profile published Jan. 2, 2005. Smith assured her she could do the job, and Lou Rell promised he could take leave during the busy weeks at the end of every session of the part-time General Assembly. Their son was 11, their daughter 14. Jodi Rell ran and won with 64% of the vote. Her style as a lawmaker and governor could be that of a no-nonsense mother, the impression her inaugural speech left with Meredith O’Connor, her daughter. “I was moved, just the way she delivered it. ‘I’m taking over. I’m in charge.’ It reminded me of what I was 14, ‘Here’s the curfew,'” O’Connor said in an interview for the profile. “She is a mom first.” Her approach to her cancer diagnosis was direct. Her tumor was small and had not spread. She could opt for removal of the tumor, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. Rell opted for a mastectomy, which would not require the potentially debilitating follow up. “She treated it like a small blip on the radar screen,” O’Connor said. At the end of her tenure, Rell cited campaign finance reform, saving the Groton submarine base, new rail cars for Metro North, and a program to encourage stem cell research in Connecticut as memorable accomplishments. She didn’t mention the legalization of same-sex civil unions and, after a court decision, gay marriage. On nearly all those issues, she compromised with lawmakers. Her pitch to create a $10 million program to fund stem cell research quickly was judged too timid. The legislature turned it into a 10-year, $100 million plan that Rell eventually accepted. She was persuaded that a one-year commitment would attract no serious research proposals and that she needed to be bolder. Rell conceded that the 10-year plan was correct. In 2007, Rell proposed raising the income tax to increase aid to education by $3.4 billion, which she called “the largest single investment in education in Connecticut history.” She abandoned the idea after an outcry from her own party. In 2009, a long standoff over the budget ended with her seeming to throw up her hands in exasperation. She let the budget become law without her signature, a gesture meant to protest pork-barrel spending added by Democrats to a compromise spending plan. “Not only had we settled on a bill and a budget, but then some people just frankly became pigs. And it just irritated the living bejesus out of me,” Rell said. “And if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been so angry.” But she declined to use that sentiment in a veto message. The passage came in September, two months after the start of the fiscal year. Connecticut was one of only two states still without a budget. Malloy, a Democrat who would govern with an abrasive style, would take office facing a record shortfall. His solution was a difficult combinations of spending cuts, employee concessions and tax increases. Rell wished him well. “If it takes a bull in a china shop, good luck,” she said. “If it takes someone who is going to sit down with the Democratic leaders and say, we’re going to sit in this room and we’re going to bang heads together until we come up with something we can live with, good luck.”