The Nation - News from March 25, 1988

An aide testified at Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham’s impeachment trial that he believed an $80,000 loan from the governor’s protocol fund to his automobile dealership was “stupid” but not illegal. Sam Steiger told the state Senate, hearing testimony on the second of three articles of impeachment, that neither he nor other top Administration officials believed the protocol fund was public money. Steiger, a former special assistant to the governor, said he considered the money to be private because it was raised voluntarily to defray the costs of Mecham’s 1987 inauguration.