Jensen's defenders won't face the facts

Former Republican Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, convicted of felonies for misusing his public office, deserves to be behind bars, the Wisconsin State Journal says in an editorial:

Lock up Jensen for at least a year

"Jensen certainly did some good things in office. But that good is overshadowed by a lust for power that corrupted his better judgment and allowed him to repeatedly break the law. Jensen deserves no less than a year behind bars plus huge fines for the tax dollars he stole and wasted.

But the Milwaukee Metropolitan Assn. of Commerce (MMAC), protectors of the taxpayers' dollars, thinks Jensen didn't do much. Milwaukee Magazine's Bruce Murphy asks:

But what are we to make of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce's monthly newsletter, which quoted [Republican radio host Jeff]Wagner's defense of Jensen that the legislator hadn't taken "so much as even a nickel of taxpayer money" and that Jensen had been singled out for jail time while others who exploited a corrupt system were ignored. "Wagner, we feel, opined fairly" on this issue, the newsletter declared.

Murphy wonders whether Steve Baas, a longtime Jensen spokesman who now works for MMAC, may have had a hand in writing it.

The idea that Jensen did nothing wrong certainly would fit Baas's view of the world. He was one of the former Jensen staffers to testify in his defense, as the Journal Sentinel reported:

...[Baas] said that he liked to write the fund-raising letters from Jensen's office because he could easily copy from press releases and newsletters he previously had written for Jensen's legislative office. The materials were also appropriated for other campaigns by the taxpayer-funded Assembly Republican Caucus, he said.

"The line between what was campaigning and what was policy is extremely vague," he said.

Baas acknowledged using graphic artists at the caucus to work for Jensen's campaign committee. Baas said Jensen never directed him to do campaign work on state time.

Baas apparently knew instinctively that he was expected to do campaign work.

As for the "not a nickel" defense, or even the "everybody did it" defense, you have to remember that Jensen took campaigning on state time to new heights by hiring his co-defendant, Sherry Schultz, who was paid $65,000 a year plus an expensive benefit package to do nothing but raise money for Republicans, in her state office, on the state payroll. No one in Wisconsin history had ever gone that far, and it cost taxpayers a lot more than a nickel. Jensen didn't put it in his own pocket, but it was stealing from the taxpayers nonetheless.

Baas testified that he and other staffers thought they were using "comp time" when they did campaign work, although no one kept track of it, and it was mixed in with state work. Sherry Schultz certainly couldn't think she was on comp time, because she never did any state work. And Jensen certainly told her what her assignment was -- to be a full-time Republican fundraiser at taxpayer expense.

MMAC owes its members an apology.