Reddit boosts momentum for Sanders' campaign

WASHINGTON — When Sen. Bernie Sanders wanted to pack a Wisconsin coliseum with supporters this month, his presidential campaign turned to Sanders' friends at Reddit, the online message board.

Aidan King, 24, of Montpelier, Vt., and David Fredrick, 32, of San Jose, Calif., have aggressively promoted Sanders' presidential candidacy on Reddit since December 2013, well before the Vermont independent announced his bid for the Democratic nomination.

For the event in Madison, Wis., King said, the pro-Sanders Reddit community went into "overdrive."

He and Fredrick targeted Wisconsin Reddit users, giving them promotional boilerplate to share with family and friends, and encouraging them to write letters to the editor and post downloadable campaign fliers in the city. They watched the online enthusiasm grow, with Reddit users setting up carpools and renting buses to the event.

"It was incredible to see," said King, a digital marketing and social media coordinator at a Vermont winery. "We just kind of dropped a match on the ground and the whole thing took off."

About 10,000 people turned out for the July 1 rally, making it possibly the largest campaign event held by any 2016 presidential candidate at that point. Sanders' campaign gives the Reddit community much of the credit.

"Reddit's outpouring of enthusiasm for our campaign and the senator's agenda may be the most exciting and unique development for our campaign online," said Kenneth Pennington, the campaign's digital director. "The community on Reddit amounts to an organized grassroots army of young supporters, and we will continue to mobilize them on behalf of the campaign in the months to come."

Less mainstream than Facebook or Twitter, Reddit tends to draw relatively young, left-leaning subscribers who use the site for entertainment, social networking and news. Users can comment and vote on content, which is organized into interest areas called "subreddits."

King and Fredrick knew nothing about each other — not even their full names — in December 2013 when they began griping about dishonest politicians on a subreddit comment thread. But they discovered they both liked Sanders.

Fredrick said he would help if King started the "Sanders For President" subreddit. King, a Vermonter who grew up with Sanders' signs in his yard, quickly took him up on the challenge.

"Four hours later, we had gotten started," said Fredrick, a furniture designer.

Their initial goal was to show Sanders he would have support if he ran for president. They spent the next eight months mining Reddit's political comment threads for potential Sanders converts and directing them back to their subreddit or "community."

"It used to be handing out pamphlets and talking to people on street corners," Fredrick said. "Well, that doesn't really work anymore. Everybody lives online."

The community drew about 7,000 subscribers ahead of Sanders' candidacy. When Sanders announced his bid, he went to the subreddit and posted a message: "I need you to stand with me and organize an unprecedented grass-roots campaign. Are you in?" Sanders signed the message "B," for Bernie.

The subreddit's subscriber number exploded, reaching about 45,000. Now, it's close to 70,000, eclipsing Reddit forums for other candidates.

"We're at a stage where the regular users are getting people to come on or it's just happening organically," King said.

Sanders has interacted with the Reddit community for years, doing periodic posts and fielding questions during three "Ask Me Anything" sessions since 2013. Reddit's generally young users have supported Sanders' calls for free college tuition, universal health care and campaign finance reform, King said.

Subreddits also can serve as forums for discussing concerns. Subscribers flooded the "Sanders for President" community with reactions to the July 18 protests at the Netroots Nation conference for liberal activists in Phoenix, where "Black Lives Matter" demonstrators demanded that Sanders and Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley address racial injustice. Some pro-Sanders redditors suggested he should focus more on the issue.

"If Bernie Sanders cannot give black voters specific policies on police reform and other related racial inequality, then neither can his supporters demand their support nor can Bernie expect their support," wrote a Nigerian-American woman who uses the screen name "meeetooh."

The pro-Sanders subreddit is autonomous but is in contact with Sanders' campaign. For instance, the campaign set up a portal for contributions at King's request when the community wanted to raise $15 contributions on July 15 to symbolize the increased minimum wage Sanders is seeking. Their "moneybomb" event raised $62,000 for Sanders on the portal and likely raised more through other platforms.

"People are self-organizing, and the campaign is just... empowering people to do that," Pennington said.