Low-Dollar Donors Push Sanders Campaign to New High

Press Release

With an eye-popping 1.3 million donations so far this year, Sen. Bernie Sanders' grassroots campaign raised more than $26 million in the past three months.

The support pushed the total raised since the campaign began on April 30 to more than $40 million for Democratic Party primaries and caucuses.

Sanders' campaign ended the quarter with about $26.5 million cash on hand.

"What it tells us is that Bernie has financial staying power," Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, said. "We have the financial wherewithal that will allow for a major campaign through Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and beyond in state-by-state, delegate-by-delegate contests for the Democratic Party nomination."

Sanders' impressive numbers were the result small donations by more than 650,000 contributors.

By comparison, then-Sen. Barack Obama's first White House campaign reached a milestone of 800,000 contributions from 500,000 donors on Jan. 3, 2008, the day of the Iowa caucuses. It wasn't until two days after the Jan 26, 2008, South Carolina primary when Obama's campaign announced that it had crossed another threshold and received 600,000 donations.

In Sanders' case, the average online donation this past quarter was about $30.00. About 99 percent of all donations were for $100 or less.

Sanders has refused to form a super PAC, the catch-all label for fundraising committees that most White House hopefuls have exploited after the Supreme Court struck down decades-old fundraising limits in a decision in the 2010 case Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission.

Sanders has bluntly branded the campaign finance system that the ruling ushered in as corrupt. "It is unacceptable to me that millionaires and billionaires are able to spend unlimited sums of money on candidates. I have chosen not to form a super PAC and am one of the few candidates for president who does not have one," he said Tuesday in a Univision Facebook Q&A. "I do not represent the billionaire class or corporate America and I do not want their money. Instead, we are relying on hundreds of thousands of individual who are providing modest contributions to our campaign."

Source