Starting at about 9:30 p.m. that evening, online donations through Sen. Bernie Sanders’s website, store and the ActBlue fundraising site reached the phenomenal clip of about two contributions per second. They stayed at that high and steady pace until the clock struck midnight. When all was said and done, online fundraising efforts like this helped the campaign raise a whopping $26 million for the quarter — just $2 million fewer than Democratic primary frontrunner and establishment favorite Hillary Clinton.
Sanders also reported more than 1 million contributions — more even than Barack Obama had pulled in during the early part of his groundbreaking 2008 presidential run. It was a major milestone for the Vermont senator’s Cinderella story campaign, proving he has both the voter base and the financial wherewithal to compete with Clinton.
If Sanders’s record-setting number of donors served as a wake-up call to establishment Democrats about the strength of the insurgent Sanders campaign, it was no surprise to those inside his operation.
Since May, a small guerilla-marketing team whose members have been part of some of the most successful insurgent campaigns in the Democratic Party have been working to translate grassroots enthusiasm for Sanders into dollars.
At its helm is Scott Goodstein, a former music marketer who made a living hyping bands like Korn prior to his political career. In 2007, after “drinking beers and talking” with Obama’s main digital strategist at the time, he and his friend, videographer Arun Chaudhary, were hired by the famously innovative campaign to help create a groundswell of support online and in local communities.
In 2009, after Obama’s election, Goodstein took everything he learned from the campaign and launched Revolution Messaging, bringing on a “lean-and-mean” group of digital marketing veterans to help. Tim Tagaris, who cut his teeth on Sen. Chris Murphy’s successful campaign against Republican Linda McMahon, and on Ned Lamont’s netroots-fueled fight against one-time Democratic vice presidential nominee and incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman, came on as a partner. He hired Michael Whitney, who had worked for Howard Dean’s pioneering 2004 presidential campaign as well as the cause-and-petitions site Change.org. Chaudhary joined up after leaving the White House, where he had been Obama’s first videographer.