'Pagegate' was a pre-caucus scandal blip

Doug Moe wrote in his "Moe Knows" column in the Capital Times last week about Scott Jensen's fall from grace -- and about an incident that came to be known -- in some very small circles -- as Pagegate:

In hindsight, the story of Jenni Cole-Opitz, who was a 19-year-old Capitol Assembly page in 1998 when it happened, is barely a blip in State Capitol history.

It may reveal a bit about the astonishing arrogance that permeated the State Capitol in the 1990s, an arrogance that culminated in the caucus scandal these years later.

Or maybe it's only a funny story, worth revisiting in the wake of Jensen's sentencing ...

It started on the morning of Thursday, Feb. 19, 1998, when the Badger Herald student newspaper on the UW-Madison campus published a story about students working in the State Capitol.

Cole-Opitz was quoted in the Herald about having once been dispatched to purchase a can of Coca-Cola for Jensen. Jensen, staffers knew, preferred to drink Pepsi in the morning and Coke in the afternoon.

That is weird in itself and perhaps something for Jensen to take up with a prison psychologist.

In any case, on that fateful afternoon, the Capitol Coke machine was empty. Cole-Opitz reported back to Jensen's staff with the news. The staff digested it and conferred about what to do. It was decided that Cole-Opitz should go across the Capitol Square to Walgreens to get Jensen a Coke.

Cole-Opitz was stunned. She told the Badger Herald: "I was just standing there in awe," she said. "He's the speaker of the (Assembly), not Jesus Christ."

By Thursday afternoon, the Herald story had made its way to the top of State Street, and the Assembly sergeant-at-arms, Denise Solie - supervisor of the pages - promptly fired Cole-Opitz.

The story held until Friday, when Democrats in the Capitol got wind of it and began calling reporters.

I took a few of those calls, and managed to contact Cole-Opitz by telephone Friday afternoon.

She sounded shaken. She told me her quote in the Herald was accurate. But she added, "I am partly responsible for this. I probably shouldn't have said that to a reporter. But it was my first dealing ever with the press."

I also spoke that day with Solie, who said there had been no pressure on her from Jensen to fire Cole-Opitz. Rather, Solie said, she had called Jensen after the firing.

"I told him what I had done," Solie said. "People who work for me run errands." Solie said there was a handbook for pages which stresses that discourtesy to legislators is cause for discipline.

My column ran Saturday, two days after the Herald story and Solie's firing of Cole-Opitz.

Sunday morning, I called Cole-Opitz at home on campus. It was 10:45 and her roommate had to wake her up, perhaps indicating that the events of the past few days weren't weighing too heavily upon her. When we spoke, though, she said there had been developments.

"I've had to hire a press secretary," she said.

"What?"

"It has been crazy around here," Cole-Opitz said. She said the "press secretary" was named Tim Provis. "Would you mind calling him?"

Provis turned out to be a lawyer. "There's no question Jenni has a lawsuit," Provis said of the firing. "But she doesn't want to sue anyone and at this point neither do I. Her job is a $6 an hour part-time job. But we're not ruling it out. We'll see what happens when Speaker Jensen gets back."

Jensen was in Arizona, perhaps visiting a soft drink bottling plant. He returned the following Tuesday.

That day, after talking to Jensen, Solie rehired Cole-Opitz. All sides apologized. A group hug seemed not out of the question.

And that was pretty much the end of "Pagegate," as the episode was called.

What Moe didn't know: The Badger Herald reporter who wrote the original story that led to Pagegate was Jessica Erickson, now the communications director for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Eight years later, she's still writing things that give Republicans heartburn.