He’s the only presidential candidate that’s been called a freedom fighter and a geek guru.

In Silicon Valley, Harvard professor Larry Lessig’s following goes back almost two decades and is rooted in his devotion to a free and open internet.

As Lessig struggles to be included in the national presidential polls and win a spot in the upcoming democratic debates, he’s banking on his loyal high-tech followers to step out from behind their computers and rally around his election and campaign finance reform platform.

Lessig, a 54-year-old South Dakota native, announced his candidacy on 6 September and is focused on reforming campaign finance and “political gerrymandering”. If elected, Lessig has said he would only serve as president until he passes the reforms, called the Citizens Equality Act 2017, he is championing through both houses of Congress. He will then immediately resign and let his vice-president assume office. Lessig’s campaign website is running a public poll about who should be Lessig’s running mate.

“Right now Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are leading in my VP polls,” said Lessig. Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, is not running for president.

Lessig doesn’t have any previous political experience other than running the Mayday Pac, a crowd-funded and nonpartisan Super Pac that backs candidates committed to campaign finance reform in the November 2014 elections.

“Certain types of households know me and I have a niche group of voters based on the work I did with Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, at Stanford, and on internet freedom,” Lessig said.

Even Lessig’s most ardent supporters concede he is a “longshot” to actually win the race.

But already, Lessig’s issue-based campaign has managed to engage a group of highly educated individuals who have historically opted out of the voting process altogether.

That niche includes Bay Area engineers, scientists, and venture capitalists who contributed to Lessig’s $1m crowdsourcing campaign in August, which led to Lessig announcing his candidacy.

“Lessig has long said every bit and bite is equal in his fight for net neutrality and now he is taking that fight to Washington and saying every vote should matter and be equal,” said Marc Krejci, a 35-year-old resident of San Jose and pastor at Venture Christian Church.

Krejci, who says his comments are his personal views, is a pastor of Innovation at the Los Gatos church, a title he says you’ll only find in Silicon Valley. His job is to lead technology initiatives for the church and “use their tech skills to act out their faith”.

Krejci has never donated to a presidential campaign and he’s never met Lessig. But he’s known about Lessig’s work on Mayday and Rootstrikers, a grassroots nonprofit fighting political corruption, and so last month he donated to Lessig’s campaign.

“A collection of individuals supporting a cause is more important than corporations and I contributed not necessarily to Larry himself but to the principle of what he represents,” said Krejci.

He said Lessig’s commitment to resign after passing the Citizens Equality Act 2017 shows him that Lessig’s run is not for greed and power.

Shannon Kealy, a 37-year-old librarian at Santa Clara University, said Lessig’s strength is not just in his platform but in his persuasive lecturing style.

“After I heard Larry speak so passionately about campaign finance reform in Portland in March, I was hooked. So when I heard he was running I wanted to show my support,” said Kealy, who donated $50 to Lessig’s campaign.

She calls him a lecture and presentation guru but says he need work on his image.

“In order to get more people to listen to him he needs to have a less egg heady approach. Hillary announced her candidacy in a beautiful video,” said Kealy, referring to the democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s video campaign announcement released on 12 April and featuring a diverse group of middle class working Americans. Clinton’s campaign announcement video has had 4.8 million views on Youtube since her announcement, whereas Lessig’s announcement video has had some 58,000 views since August 10.

While they are not as flashy as Clinton’s videos, Lessig says millions of people have watched the more than 800 talks he’s given on everything from corruption in the US Congress to copyright law and he says he is working to get those people to support him in the polls.

“I don’t have $10 billion and I can’t ‘trump’ this,” says Lessig. But Lessig did speak at an event in August held by Steve Jurvetson, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

“In Silicon Valley there are people who make small bets to change the world and that is what I am presenting here,” said Lessig, who spent almost a decade at Stanford University’s School of Law and founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

Lessig has only been included in one national poll so far – a September survey by the left-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP) that found 1% of likely Democratic primary voters supported the Harvard professor. He has complained publicly that his omission from other national polls might mean his exclusion from the Democratic debates, which require polling of at least 1% in three national polls.

He says he will build on his Bay Area connections in the coming months as his campaign picks up steam.

Krejci says Lessig’s deep knowledge of the internet and how to create digital communities is his strength.

“Lessig’s sweet spot is in the digital economy. He understands that political communications are different now and people participate differently,” said Krejci, who offers Lessig’s appearance on Reddit’s AMAs on 25 August as an example of how the internet lawyer is different from other candidates.

“The general public could log in and ask him questions directly,” said Krejci.

Lessig remains confident that his supporters are out there and he gives the example of the outpouring of sadness and support his friend and internet activist Aaron Swartz received after his death he committed suicide in January 2013. Swartz was under indictment for breaking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and downloading a large number of academic journal articles through the university’s computer network.

“Millions of people came out of the woodwork and he [Swartz] didn’t even know how many people knew about him,” said Lessig.

Still, there are many people in the Bay Area who’ve never heard of Lessig, but who can name Clinton, businessman Donald Trump and longtime Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

“It’s hard for me to care about either side [Republicans or Democrats] because they are all crooks,” said 48 year old Lisa Taber from Boulder Creek.

When asked about the loss of hope in the political process as expressed by Taber, Lessig said, “That’s why I am about one single issue and that is fixing this system so people will care again.”

He says that is his critical difference with Sanders, whose platform takes on a range of issue including income equality and climate change.

Some political experts also question the premise of Lessig’s campaign that campaign finance is the crux of other public policy problems.

“There is no doubt that money in elections facilitates the transfer of economic inequality into political inequality… At the same time it is foolish to imagine that campaign finance is the only route for private wealth to influence public policy or that its reform will dramatically transform the policy process,” said Thomas Mann, a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution and a scholar at University of California Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS), in a recent IGS blog post.

Mann writes that campaign finance reform won’t be a critical factor on other key issues.

“Money did not prevent the major legislative enactments of 2009-2010 – including the stimulus, student loans, the Affordable Care Act, and financial services reform. Nor is it likely to be the critical factor on climate change, immigration, infrastructure or jobs and wages; which party wins the White House and whether control with Congress is unified or divided is key,” wrote Mann.

But Michael Eisen, a biologist at the University of California Berkeley and a co-founder of the Public Library of Science (PLOS), a nonprofit publishing project trying to make content in scientific journals free to the public, said Lessig is good at getting to the core of technical and policy related issues and getting people to understand and care about them.

“In the early 2000s people were already thinking about net neutrality and free culture but he [Lessig] was the best person to reach into the Zeitgeist and pull out the things that synthesized what people were feeling,” said Eisen.

Lessig served on the board of PLOS from 2003 to 2007 and Eisen says he sees Lessig reaching into his scientific toolkit again but this time to architect a solution to election and campaign finance problems. Eisen contributed less than $100 to Lessig’s campaign.

“Larry is telling Americans to stop focusing on politics and fix the infrastructure of politics,” said Eisen.