Did Tea-Publican council candidate Jennifer Rawson violate campaign finance law?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ruh-Roh! This has all the appearances of campaign finance law violations: campaign kickbacks and campaign expenditures that are not qualified expenditures, all to create "phantom" donations in order to qualify for public money matching funds from Tucson's clean elections system. Somebody's got some splainin' to do!

Press release from the Pima County Demcoratic Party:

Republican City Council candidate Jennifer Rawson needs to explain $2,650 in bizarre contributions that require city taxpayers to match.

On Aug. 3, her campaign paid $2,650 to supporters in amounts ranging from $260 to $430. That same day, each of those folks then went and wrote checks for the same amount back to Rawson's campaign. Rawson's supporters are out of pocket nothing and she has no extra money but the donations count toward matching funds.

Rawson now claims those funds are eligible for taxpayer matching funds.

Here are a couple of examples: On Aug. 3, Klaus Axen received a $260 check from the Rawson campaign. Axen donated $260 to Rawson on the same day. Larry Studley that same day received a $430 check from Rawson's campaign and wrote a $430 check to Rawson. This happened six times on Aug. 3 for a grand total of $2,650. For the reporting period, writing checks to supporters accounted for more than half of her expenditures from July 1 to Aug. 10.

“It's strange that her campaign is paying people the exact amount of money that they are donating,” said Pima County Democratic Party Chair Jeff Rogers. “You could raise just $500 and keep paying people to donate to you all the way up to $50,000 and get that much in matching funds. I'm not sure that's what the law intended.”