Say this about State Rep. Scott Jensen: The man doesn't go down without a fight. Charged four years ago with several felonies stemming from allegations of using his state office for campaign purposes, Mr. Jensen is finally at the end of the line — and he's taking everyone down with him. Not only did Jensen dig his own grave by going to trial during the past two weeks, but he reserved a spot for a whole slew of his colleagues, including — in a most ironic twist — members of the party he's fought so hard for throughout his career.

It's not exactly how I envisioned the final chapter of this story, known as the Great Wisconsin Caucus Scandal, would go down. To be sure, what began as shocking revelations back in 2002 of an intricate operation of state workers doing campaign work on the taxpayers' dime was never intended to have a happy ending, but it wasn't supposed to include this much collateral damage. As the final act in the Caucus Scandal, the Jensen trial has morphed into a veritable Hamlet: Everybody's dead. Or at least a lot of reputations are.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. Mr. Jensen has always seemed determined to have the last say in this story, the man who would save the day where his legislative co-stars couldn't. He would prove that he and his Capitol cohorts hadn't done anything wrong, that the line between lawmaking and campaigning was never crossed back in those heady caucus days and that prosecutors were overzealous in creating scandal where none existed. You have to admit, it makes for a pretty intriguing plot.

So intriguing, in fact, that Mr. Jensen decided to fight the charges against him before a jury — a strategy that runs counter to that of the other legislators implicated in the scandal, who all accepted pre-trial plea bargains. The deals have been highly lenient. For former state Sen. Brian Burke, for instance, it was so sweet that he won't even have to spend any time in jail, instead just serving, in essence, house arrest.

But Mr. Jensen couldn't accept such a thing. He's going to be the hero, remember. And so the last pages of the Great Wisconsin Caucus Scandal began last week with his trial, where the prosecution trotted out witness after witness detailing how Mr. Jensen allegedly used his office and the Assembly Republican Caucus as de facto campaign headquarters. They would create campaign literature, accept campaign donations from lobbyists and communicate with campaign field operatives — all the while taking elaborate steps to ensure they would not be caught. One former staffer estimated she spent 80 percent of her time on the clock working on campaign issues in the months leading up to the 2000 election.

Going to trial was a decided gamble on the part of Mr. Jensen. If he was acquitted, he would be able to retain his Assembly seat for as long as he desired. After all, a criminal conviction is probably the only way a Republican could not get reelected in Waukesha — there's about as much chance of a Democrat being elected from the county as there is of the University of Wisconsin Humanities Department renaming their building "Ronald Reagan Hall."

Then, he would wait until U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner retires (contrary to popular belief, it will happen someday), and all of a sudden Mr. Jensen would be a Congressman.

Or so the logic went. Too bad the prosecution had all that evidence against him. To be fair, the jury has not handed down a verdict in the trial yet, although such an action could occur as soon as today. But I'm not seeing visions of "not guilty" in my head.

And down with him may go the Republican Party of Wisconsin's fortunes in the upcoming election this November. By going to trial, the public was bombarded by tales of the intricate manipulations the Assembly Republican Caucus executed to cheat the states' taxpayers. There weren't just a few bad apples in the Capitol. There was an entire caucus of rottenness. To wit, the various people the prosecution awarded immunity in exchange for their testimony reads like a who's-who of Republican Capitol staffers.

Of course, the Democratic Party's hands are far from clean, either. As Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard learned in his investigation, the Democratic Caucus was a corrupt campaign machine as well, participating in the same techniques as the GOP's caucus. And in non-caucus scandal news, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle is still very much enveloped by accusations of pay-to-play dealings in his office.

But thanks to Mr. Jensen, the Democrats' indiscretions don't seem nearly as visible right now. Telling is that the Democratic Party's beleaguered counterpart of Mr. Jensen — former Sen. Chuck Chvala, a man who faced worse charges — quietly accepted a nine-month jail sentence to avoid trial in December. I won't suggest he made that decision out of a desire to protect his party, but Mr. Chvala did have that effect by accepting the plea bargain.

The state GOP, meanwhile, will bear the brunt of Mr. Jensen's antics. He has every right to contest the criminal charges he is facing, but by rejecting any plea bargain, one would assume that he believed he had a good chance of winning himself an acquittal in court. Yet the defense's main argument this week seemed to be merely that Mr. Jensen was a hands-off office manager who did not track his staffers' day-to-day operations. So, just as former Enron CEOs Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling somehow didn't know the company they ran was hiding millions of dollars in debt from its shareholders, Mr. Jensen didn't know the "Vote for Jensen" pamphlets his staff designed were not for use in the next day's committee hearing.

If you believe that, I've got a swelling groundwater aquifer to sell you in Waukesha County.

Ultimately, fitting justice was served here. Scott Jensen circumvented state law in his one-track goal of increasing the Republican majority in the Legislature. Now, in his pathetic attempt to prove his innocence, the party will pay for affording him such a powerful position.

But if you're a Republican in the state, it's a pretty lousy conclusion to the Great Wisconsin Caucus Scandal.

Then again, the removal of a man like Mr. Jensen from the party's ranks must be viewed as a small victory — both for the GOP and the state government as a whole. After four years, the state should be happy to secure any one of those it can get.

Ryan Masse ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and economics.