How a team of Obama veterans helped Bernie Sanders pull in a record number of donations

sanders 2Despite the amount of money the Sanders campaign has raised thus far, the candidate still faces a number of financial obstacles. According to Richard Hassen, a professor specializing in election law at the University of Irvine’s law school, Sanders’s sizeable support from small donors does not necessarily mean he’ll be successful in the primaries.

“There are some candidates that tend to attract more broad-based support than others,” Hassen told Yahoo News “Barack Obama did it, Howard Dean did it, Ron Paul did it and Ted Cruz has that going on. But having that base does not guarantee success, as Howard Dean can tell you.”

Because Clinton has the advantageous support of super-PACs, which are less beholden to donation limits, she’s also able to spend a much higher fraction of her donations than Sanders. According to the New York Times, Clinton has spent 90 percent of the $28 million she raised for her campaign between April and July. Sanders, by comparison, has spent an estimated $15 million, mostly on his online fundraising operation and hiring staff. Stephen Spaulding, a senior policy adviser at the nonprofit organization Common Cause, says we’ve yet to see the effects of super-PAC donations in the 2016 race.

“This is the second presidential election post-Citizens United,” he told Yahoo News. “We’re going to see even more outside money, and candidates that are relying on small donors need to build up a defense against this big money. I’m sure they’re planning for those anonymous attack ads from super-PACs that’ll be headed their way.”

Rest assured that Goodstein already has a cache of emails and targeted ads queued up for the next one, ready to mobilize the Sanders base to fight back.

Article Appeared @https://www.yahoo.com/politics/how-a-team-of-obama-veterans-helped-bernie-sanders-131204886.html

 

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