The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign has gotten off to a strong fundraising start.
In just a few days, the campaign has raised more than $2 million and almost all of the contributions have come from small donors.
Sanders says he can be successful as a presidential candidate only if hundreds of thousands of Americans contribute to his campaign. His goal is to raise between $40 and $50 million dollars over the next eight months.
In the first few days of his campaign, Sanders received more than $2 million from over 35,000 people. The average contribution is just under $50.
Retired Middlebury College political science professor Eric Davis says this weekend's fundraising efforts make it very likely that Sanders will be able to reach his goal.
"I believe there are two million people out there who would give an average of $25 each to the Sanders presidential campaign that would enable him to raise $50 million over the next few months,” says Davis.
Davis says Sanders will need around $10 million to pay for his campaign infrastructure. The rest of the money can be used in the early primaries. "That would leave roughly $10 million per state for the four early primary and caucus states, [which are] Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. I believe that's enough to be competitive in each of those four states,” he says.
One of the biggest challenges facing Sanders, says Davis, involves the controversy surrounding fundraising efforts by the Clinton Foundation. It's been reported that the foundation solicited hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign countries at a time when Clinton was Secretary of State. But there's been no evidence that the contributions influenced U.S. policy.
Davis wonders if Sanders will bring this issue up during the campaign. "Whether he wants to raise those sorts of issues and make the argument that they make Hillary Clinton less than well qualified for the job of President of the United States,” Davis says.
Sanders will officially hold a campaign kick off in Burlington on May 26.
Copyright 2015 Vermont Public Radio
