Brooklyn College will be the first to “feel the Bern” this Saturday when Senator Bernie Sanders will hold his first rally for his 2020 presidential campaign.
The rally is happening March 2, at 10 a.m. at 2900 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn; RSVP here.
Sanders’ campaign is already in its first week pulling in millions in donations, raising $10 million from over 359,000 donors in the one week since his 2020 announcement.
NY Magazine points out that Bernie is already leading the Democratic candidate pack by showing his ability to pull in new small individual donors, at an average of $26, in an election where corporate donations are being shunned.
Aside from the $10 million total — representing 14 percent of Sanders’s fundraising sum in 2015 — three factors from week one stand out in the senator’s favor. In a race where the source of the fundraising could be as important as the money itself, Sanders is relying on small gifts from young donors: According to the Times, donations to the economic populist averaged around $26, and the most common age for a donor was 30 years old. The 2020 field has shifted way to the left of the last cycle, and among the more liberal candidates in the pack, corporate donations could act as a PR burden. Already, Elizabeth Warren — with whom Sanders shares a good deal of his policy stances — announced she will no longer hold fundraisers with wealthy donors, while Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand said they will steer clear of corporate PAC money.
Second, it looks as if Sanders has attracted a new swath of voters, according to information shared with the Times. Almost 39 percent of donors used an email address that was not registered with the 2016 campaign. Assuming the vast majority of those aren’t old donors using new emails, it suggests the campaign has broadened its support since the 2016 run, in which Sanders pulled in 43.1 percent of the primary vote. “There’s an assumption he’s relying on that loyal base of support from 2016,” Democratic strategist Jen Psaki told the Times. The new donors could “make people question the assumption that Bernie supporters are solely Bernie loyalists from 2016.”
Third, the 2020 Sanders has a built-in sustaining donor base, who have signed up to send monthly donations that will reportedly net over $1 million each month. In a crowded race, where at least ten candidates are vying for small donations, Sanders’s 48,000 monthly donors will help give the campaign momentum for the long run.