Bernie Sanders rallies draw crowds in Tallahassee

Tallahassee supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' underdog campaign to capture the Democratic nomination for president came out in sizable numbers Wednesday night to cheer on their candidate.

An overflowing crowd of 200 or so people crammed outside the Crum Box Gastgarden in Railroad Square, and more supporters rallied at the Leon County Public Library downtown. The events coincided with 3,500 other grass-roots gatherings across the country attracting more than 100,000 people, the campaign said.

Sanders, a 73-year-old independent from Vermont, addressed the crowds himself in a live-stream video, touching on issues from income disparity to campaign-finance reform, health care and college-student debt. He pledged, among other things, to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United, which allows corporations to give unlimited campaign contributions, and to increase the minimum wage.

"The American people are saying loudly and clearly enough is enough," he said. "This great country and our government belongs to all of us and not just a handful of millionaires."

The event in Railroad Square attracted numerous students along with older adults, some who drove in from South Georgia. They wore Sanders buttons and T-shirts with slogans like "#feelthebern" and "Join the political revolution today."

"All of us want a change in the way our nation is going," said Kelly Maere, who attends Tallahassee Community College. "A lot of us here are students who are either in debt or can't go to college because of money issues. And Bernie Sanders is a candidate who supports (fixing) that, among other issues."

Landon Glover, a TCC student who helped organize the event, said he's drawn to Sanders because he has refused to accept Super PAC money and supports campaign-finance reform.

"Democracy shouldn't be run by how much money you have — it should be run by the ideas you have," Glover said.

Sanders is running behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state, in both polls and fund-raising. Nationwide polls show Clinton leading Sanders by as much as 49 percentage points, though Sanders has been out-performing the rest of the actual and possible Democratic field, including Vice President Joe Biden.

Earlier this month, Sanders reported raising a little over $15 million, and he said Wednesday the money has come in from more than 325,000 individual contributors, more than any of the other candidates. Clinton's campaign raised more than $47 million, with an additional $15-plus million coming from outside groups, according to media reports.

Neil C. Spencer, president of Noles Want Bernie, said he supports Sanders because of his stance on raising the minimum wage, addressing police brutality and allowing students to attend college tuition-free.

"He talks to me as a person, not as a politician," Spencer said. "He has had the same positions his entire political career that are just getting into the political mainstream."

Nancy Bennett of Winslow, Illinois, traveled to the Railroad Square event with three friends she's visiting from Colquitt, Georgia.

"We have to elect Bernie Sanders because we have to take our democracy back," she said. "Bernie Sanders is a man of principle. And he is not owned by anybody. He's a man of conscience."

Sanders on the issues

•Supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years.

•Supports legislation that would expand paid family and medical leave for workers and introduced legislation that would give workers a minimum of 10 days of paid vacation time.

•Introduced legislation he says would create at least 13 million jobs by investing $1 trillion over 5 years to modernize the country's infrastructure.

•Supports measures to reduce "wealth inequality;" says the top one-tenth of 1 percent of the nation owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined.

•Would nominate U.S. Supreme Court justices who promise to overturn the Citizens United ruling, which allows unlimited corporate political donations.

•Supports a tax on carbon and methane emissions and led opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.