Assuming her contributions didn't exceed the $212,000 expenditures number she posted the day before the election, it wouldn't--since it takes the higher figure.

But it does raise the issue of raising/spending money late, too late for the opponents to collect a check and spend. The last sentence of the pdf indicates that they want to consider that situation for the next cycle.

A senior campaign staffer told me they suspected Ginny of "gaming the system" the whole way, basically sandbagging until the end in an effort to leave Sten unprepared to plan new expenditures in the last couple days.

The problem was that money got its ass kicked by GOTV. Sten made his nut in Southeast, where he personally canvassed for hours. He got his people out, and they made the difference.

Burdick was pitiful.

This is what happens when information rolls in at the end of the day--it leaves a lot of otherwise quite easily answered questions unanswered for a good 16 hours. We'll have more on this tomorrow, if anyone wants to check back at the Mercury Blog.

Speaking of, what's with the BlueOregon/Mercury lovefest? I mean, what a shitty, worthless paper! Why would you bother linking to it?

(The last paragraph is inevitable in any post that mentions the Mercury. I though that, for once, I'd be the first jackass to say it. Saves others the trouble.)

BlueOregon hearts the Merc! Way back in the day, when the Mercury was delivered by telegraph, I interviewed, and later endorsed, Phil Busse on the Oregon Blog. I don't know about anyone else in the greater BlueOregon collective, but I've always loved the Merc. I even have the first ever edition laying around somewhere (presciently identified as a "collectors edition" on the cover).

However, now that you've gone into blogging, well....

So the total's now up to at least $243,112.31 according to Scott Moore - who certainly does deserve credit for staying on top of this, in stark contrast to the crew at the Oregonian - including Anna Griffin and Ryan Frank, not just the blowhards on the ed. board.

Anna and Ryan's post-election write-up was especially off the mark in giving free play to Burdick's "incumbent protection" whine without any challenge either from the facts or from VOE supporters. It's very sad to see decent reporters apparently succumbing to the O's editorial stridency on this one.

Right on, Dan. Anna Griffin's piece in yesterday's paper was terrible in its treatment of campaign finance. Here's a letter I wrote her last night:

Ms. Griffin-

I read your story about local incumbents in Thursday's Metro section with great interest, having followed these races closely.

I was surprised by the characterization of Burdick's loss, and her attempt to make campaign finance the central issue, given by all three of your sources (including Burdick, but not Sten.) They assume that Burdick was correct on campaign finance, but failed to make her point convincingly; but none considers the possibility that voters actually approve of voter-owned elections.

In your story, Len Bergstein says of her effort "You're asking people to connect a lot of dots," implying that voters are incapable of understanding the issue. Tim Hibbitts goes further - "There's no question [voters] knew about...the problems with voter-owned elections. But they still said, 'On balance, this guy deserves re-election." His statement begs the question, by assuming that those of us considering voter-owned elections would consider the issue a liability for Sten, rather than an advantage.

Burdick did not merely fail to make her case clearly - she advocated a position on which she was out of step with the voting public. To put it simply, her message was not poorly sold; it was the wrong message.

Burdick had as much opportunity to opt into Voter-Owned Elections as any other candidate; she chose to take the big money instead. She criticized Sten for taking tax dollars, but failed to acknowledge that she had actively promoted the state tax credit for contributions in her fundraising appeals.

Burdick's quote in your story is a logical non-sequitur: she claims that Voter-Owned Elections afford an advantage to the incumbent, but gives no explanation of how that could be. I can't imagine what such an argument would be.

I liked your story on the whole, but was surprised by the lack of diligence on this point. It's an important one. If the sources you talked to failed to make this basic point, there are many others you could have asked.

-Pete Forsyth SE Portland

Burdick's quote in your story is a logical non-sequitur: she claims that Voter-Owned Elections afford an advantage to the incumbent, but gives no explanation of how that could be. I can't imagine what such an argument would be.

Well, the argument is that for $150,000 you can't possibly beat the name ID of an incumbent.

That, of course, is a stupid argument.

For starters, under the traditional big-money system, more than 90% of the time the incumbent has more money than the challenger.

The argument could be made that that's OK, if you head toward the saturation point. If Ginny had $500k and Erik had $600k, she might argue that she'd have spent enough to raise her profile and damage his.

Of course, that WAS an option for her. She could have raised $500k, and Erik would have had... wait for it... the same $500k. In fact, even under a "fundraise to the sky!" campaign, she would have restricted the incumbent to the same dollars as her -- giving her a money situation better than 90%+ of challengers.

It's not Erik's fault, nor is it VOE's fault, that the Burdick campaign made a number of grave strategic errors.

Here's some free advice: if you're running against an incumbent, don't run a re-election campaign. VOE or not, you're going to lose.

One of the things that's interesting to me about this race is the inordinate amount of money that Ginny sent to her own firm (where she's a Vice-President). Anna Griffin of the Oregonian did some good reporting on this, but Burdick refused to disclosed how she's compensated over at G+G. So I guess it's not a total loss from Ginny's perspective...

Normally I wouldn't even be writing this after the campaign's over -- since the voters have already overwhelming rejected her -- but given that G+G and Burdick continue to beat the dead VOE horse (after their own incompetence failed to place a repeal on the ballot), I have little sympathy.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Tuesday's vote was not just pro-Sten, but clearly a direct rejection of Ginny's slash and burn politics. Good for voters for wading through the G+G distortion and spin.

Kari-

I don't doubt that Burdick made strategic errors, but I still believe the problems with the substance of her campaign were more important.

What is it with you journalist types- always assuming that the sales technique is at issue, rather than the product? We rely on you guys charge through the spin and get to the issues, and not get distracted like the rest of us.

Feel like I'm channeling a little Jon Stewart here. He's my hero.

-Pete

One other point on Burdick's money: Let's not forget that the so-called "First Things First" Committee - virtually identical with Burdick's list of big contributors - spent some $350,000 trying to place their VOE repeal on the ballot. This was also money spent targeting Sten, though they obviously hoped they'd be able to use the measure to pump yet more in had the measure made it to the ballot, and in ways that, like Burdick's late money, would have avoided triggering the matching money.

Just to keep the record straight, Dan--according to Follow the Money Oregon, the crossover between FtF and Burdick's campaign was 40%, 50% among the top givers. But you're absolutely right; if it had made the ballot, you can believe that a pseudo-campaign against Erik would have been run out of that fund as well.

Another record-straightening point: Kari, if Ginny had raised $500K, Erik would have had $300K - the VOE matching system caps out at 2x the base amount.

Pete-- As we saw in the VOE repeal debacle, being on the wrong side of an issue and running an incompetent effort are not mutually exclusive. Both the Burdick and FTF campaigns fall into this overpaid, underachieving consultant-heavy category.

Since Erik was always going to get at least as much as the highest spending opponent, he will have the incumbent edge on top of that.

Actually, it was stated above that the maximum he could get was $300K. So an opponent could indeed spend more than him.

Chris, you're right -- the VOE system has a hard cap of double the soft cap. (I happen to believe that that's a problem for the system, for exactly the reasons that Steve mentions -- a wealthy guy could come in and overwhelm the system; eliminating the whole point. By having no hard cap, you eliminate the incentive. But anyway...)

What is it with you journalist types- always assuming that the sales technique is at issue, rather than the product?

Peter, I know journalists, journalists are friends of mine, and I am not a journalist.

why is blueoregon stumping for redbenwestlund over there in the ads? the rest of the ads are fitting. not that one.

This is off-topic, but I'll just say that BlueOregon isn't stumping for anyone. BlueOregon is a bunch of bits on a server, it doesn't have opinions.

Kari- that was meant as a friendly jab, nothing more. In fact I regretted it the moment I hit "post" - I figured it might get taken more seriously than it was intended (by you or just about anyone else.) Ah, the perils of the blogosphere...

<h2>-Pete</h2>