The Wilkerson train wreck

SO ENDS, once and for all, the long, troubled public career of state Senator Dianne Wilkerson.

And what can one say, really, except this: Good riddance.

Wilkerson was led away in handcuffs yesterday, arrested for allegedly accepting thousands of dollars in bribes for helping people she thought were businessmen hoping to open a nightclub or do projects in her district. The first businessman, however, turned cooperating federal witness, while the others were undercover FBI agents.

In what's destined to become a Beacon Hill corruption classic, the evidence includes photographs of the senator not only taking money, but actually stuffing the cash into her bra.

Yes, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but the photos are the photos, and they are damning indeed.

Wilkerson's lawyers might have a shot at getting her off by arguing entrapment - that worked for former state rep Vinnie Piro under similar circumstances back in the mid-1980s, after all - but it looks for all the world like Wilkerson has disgraced herself by selling her office for bribes.

One question that now looms is: Does she take others down with her?

Once these corruption cases start, you never quite know where they will end, particularly when something as lucrative as a liquor license is involved. The prospect of a long prison sentence could serve as an inducement for Wilkerson to cut a deal.

Wilkerson's arrest has certainly cast a pall over the state Senate.

Yesterday, a tense, terse, tight-lipped Therese Murray, president of the Senate, read a brief statement saying she would immediately remove Wilkerson from her $15,000 post as Senate chair of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight and refer the matter to the Senate Ethics Committee.

To underline just how checkered Wilkerson's career has been, the Senate has done the very same thing to her before. In 1998, it stripped the Roxbury senator of her post as Senate chair of the Joint Committee on Insurance, after she pled guilty to failing to file federal tax returns from 1991 to 1994.

Murray has reason to be livid. According to the federal affidavit outlining alleged events in this case, Wilkerson had enlisted her help in her efforts to obtain a liquor license for a man who was paying her off. Murray's office had no comment on that, but it's important to note that there are no allegations that the Senate president has done anything improper.

According to the federal affidavit, one of Wilkerson's associates also talked of bribing several other House members and a Boston city councilor, though the document doesn't allege that that happened.

Further, US Attorney Michael Sullivan told reporters yesterday that other Beacon Hill lawmakers had not been implicated.

Already there has been talk among Wilkerson's colleagues that this is a sad or tragic event.

Spare me.

Dianne Wilkerson couldn't even be called a train wreck waiting to happen.

She is a train wreck that happened long ago, but who has been indulged, excused, treated with kid gloves. And in large part it's because she was the state's only African-American senator.

It's long been obvious that Wilkerson didn't think the rules applied to her. Or the laws, either.

Not the campaign finance laws.

Not the law that says you must file - and pay - your income taxes.

And now, apparently, not the law that says you can't sell your office for bribes.

Yesterday, Senate minority leader Richard Tisei called on Wilkerson to resign her office. If she had any sense of honor or integrity, she would. Of course, if she had those qualities, she wouldn't be in this situation.

It's time for her onetime Democratic allies to echo that call.

Despite her long and troubled history, both Governor Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino endorsed Wilkerson in the primary, which she nevertheless lost. That was foolish. With a cloud of scandal and controversy gathering over the Democrats on Beacon Hill, leaders need to put a concern with ethics and honesty over loyalty.

Both should make it clear that the time has come for the disgraced lawmaker to go.

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com