Sanders online fundraising gives Clinton a run for her money
The insurgent Democratic presidential candidate's success with low-dollar online fundraising perfectly complements his denouncement of big money in politics.
The resulting flood of donations slowed his campaign website to a crawl and made up a surge greater than anything ActBlue, his online fundraising processor, had ever experienced.
If it is the candidate's duty to "make it rain," it is the digital shop's job to "make the biggest possible buckets to catch that rain," said Ari Rabin-Havt, a liberal talk show host on Sirius XM who knows many of the top Democratic online strategists, including those working for Sanders.
In his even younger years, Pennington was an Internet geek who wrote a blog about mobile phones and built a website to help his dad, a middle-school teacher, sell a book.
Pennington began as a press aide to the senator, where he grew accustomed to typing out the Facebook posts that his boss would think of in the shower and dictate once he arrived in the office.
When Sanders announced his presidential run in May, the campaign brought aboard Revolution Messaging, a Washington-based firm with a name that conveniently echoes Sanders' assertion that his bid is a "political revolution."
Four years after Dean, that underdog element helped Barack Obama raise enough money to win the 2008 Democratic nomination over Clinton, who as a former first lady initially had a far larger donor network.
In Republican presidential politics, the best-known online fundraiser was also an upstart candidate, Ron Paul.