Portland Elections C&E Fun, Part Two

So let me get this straight: Ginny Burdick outspent Erik Sten by $80,000 in their primary race {pdf}, triggering matching funds to Sten that made the profligacy moot. Why did she do that--did the flood of contributors surge to bouy her into office at the last minute?

Not exactly. Over $30,000 in cash and in-kind contributions did flow into Burdick's campaign in the last reporting period. But by far, the biggest boost in monies came from two major supporters and contributors, who had been working for months to get her elected...

Ginny Burdick, and her campaign manager Ed Grosswiler. Between the two, they loaned the campaign over $57 thousand in its last days. Grosswiler was particularly generous, offering up $47 thousand to the cause.

So let me get this straight: Ginny Burdick outspent Erik Sten by $80,000 in their primary race, triggering matching funds to Sten that made the profligacy moot--and 3/4 of it was money she and her top aide LOANED themselves?

And I have another question: I can understand making final salary payments to campaign employees on the last day of the election. But there's a question of sandbagging going on in Burdick's last-day expenditures--look at all the money Laura Imeson and Catherine Hart got, and not apparently for straight salary. Was that money all spent on Election Day? More conspicuously, Gard and Gerber got paid over $50,000 on the final day--$58,424 in total between the 12th and the 16th, in fact. Wow, that number seems familiar. Didn't someone loan the campaign almost that much, right around that time?

So let me get this straight: Ginny Burdick outspent Erik Sten by $80,000 in their primary race, triggering matching funds to Sten that made the profligacy moot--and 3/4 of it was money she and her top aide LOANED themselves, and it seems like the money might have gone to pay Gard and Gerber, the company Burdick works for?

Sniff, sniff...