“You are looking at one candidate for president who does not have a super PAC and I’m damn proud of that,” Bernie Sanders told a gymnasium full of supporters in Salem, New Hampshire, on Sunday night. It was one if the first big applause lines of a town meeting at a middle school.
Instead of being bankrolled by millionaires and billionaires, Sanders’ surging campaign is being fueled by huge turnouts at rallies and town meetings like the one at Woodbury Middle School. In this small southern New Hampshire town, some 1,000 people filled the gym and an adjacent cafeteria, Fire Marshal Jeff Emanuelson estimated.
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In addition to drawing bigger crowds than any other candidate for the White House, the Sanders campaign has another distinction. The campaign has been funded by a lot of donors who gave what little they could afford. In the few months since the launch date, more than 400,000 people have donated to the campaign. The average contribution is $31.20
“They have the money but we have the people and when the people stand together there is nothing we can’t accomplish,” Sanders said. “This country belongs to all of us and not just a handful of billionaires.”
One way for a people-powered campaign to match and even overcome all of the Super PAC money being larded out to other candidates was suggested by one of the speakers who introduced the senator in Salem.
“Become a human billboard for Bernie,” Ben Cohen urged the crowd.
The brainstorm came from one of the Vermont businessmen who built Ben & Jerry’s ice cream into a world-famous brand. He knows a thing or two about marketing.
It’s that simple, Ben Cohen said. Everyone at the school, every one who has showed up at big rallies, everyone who has given $31 to the campaign, everyone who supports the campaign to rebuild the middle class and take on the billionaire class can all do one more thing to spread the word: Become a human billboard for Bernie.