Bernie Sanders Supporters Pack Washington Hall to Kick Off the State Campaign

Berners RS

Around 300 people crammed into Washington Hall Thursday night for a King County kick-off rally in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign.

The rally comes two days after the campaign announced staff hires in Washington, as well as a string of endorsements from local officials, including Seattle City Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda and Kshama Sawant, newly elected King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, and State Senator Bob Hasegawa.

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Sanders's Washington state director Carin Chase, an Edmonds school board member, said the strategy to win Washington in 2020 will be the same one they used in 2016. They plan to whip up a "multigenerational and multiracial coalition" of volunteers to leverage their own networks and expand the electorate, she said.

Aside from competing for votes in a much larger field, the major difference between 2016 and 2020 is the campaign's reliance on the BERN app. The new tool allows volunteers to look up friends and family members in the national voter file and then organize local events on their own, without direct assistance from a state field office. National staffers dedicated to particular constituency groups—Asians and Pacific Islanders, veterans, muslims—hold mass trainings to get volunteers on the same page, and then those volunteers organize mapping parties and phone banking parties within their own communities.

Supreet Kaur, the Sanders's national Asians and Pacific Islanders organizer, said this strategy allows the campaign to "use our massive volunteer base to organize at a scale that no other candidate can match."

Pointing to Sanders's success in 2016, where he won Washington's Democratic caucuses with 73% of the state's delegates but lost the meaningless primary, Kaur believes volunteers trained in this way will be just as effective as paid staffers running a field operation. "Studies have shown that someone you trust and someone from your community has more persuasive leverage than a stranger knocking on your door," she said.

Chase said BERNers have held 700 events throughout the state already, and they plan to ramp up efforts in the coming weeks.

Of course, in order for this strategy to work, Sanders's campaign needs a lot of people to download the app. And last night, when speakers weren't making their case for Sanders, they were telling people to do just that.

It was hard to tell if the crowd was full of new Bernie supporters, or if they were largely composed of the same crew from 2016, but when Chase took the stage she said the rally felt more like a family reunion. However, one of the evening's more memorable moments came from climate activist Jamie Margolin, who confessed she used to be a "centrist, neoliberal Hillary Clinton supporter" at 14, before the severity of the climate crisis showed her that more progressive action was needed.

For more highlights from the evening, check out the thread embedded below. Though all the speakers had their own reasons for supporting Sanders, Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda summed up the general theme nicely: “Not only does he have the most progressive policies, he’s the most capable of winning.”

Here at the kick off party for the Bernie Sanders campaign in Washington state. Washington Hall is packed, and I have learned that there are light snacks, juice, and smooth jams from @spekulation under socialism. pic.twitter.com/QMyKmZDe6w

— Rich Smith 🥀 (@richsssmith) January 10, 2020

Mosqueda calls Bernie a “uniter.” Says he’s calling out the “true enemy,” which is the “classist economic system which is trying to divide us.” — Rich Smith 🥀 (@richsssmith) January 10, 2020

Ava Sharifi, Irani American who was a Bernie delegate in 2016, lauds Bernie as the “only Democrat who says no war no matter what,” to much applause. pic.twitter.com/MrRJQaE3DR January 10, 2020

.@JessedHagopian, a teacher and education activist, says he’s never endorsed a president before but he feels compelled to do so now. “He’s not afraid to call out the main enemy we face, which is the system of Capitalism,” he says, after praising his education plan. — Rich Smith 🥀 (@richsssmith) January 10, 2020

.@cmkshama, the last of many speakers this evening, is greeted with a standing ovation and foot stomping. She argues that Bernie is the only one who can win, and cautions against making personal attacks on Warren supporters. “We neeed to put the emphasis on the issues,” she says. pic.twitter.com/UUaFKeOLno — Rich Smith 🥀 (@richsssmith) January 10, 2020

The evening closes with a Bernie chant, pitched as a kind of answer to the social media strategies of other candidates pic.twitter.com/WuOpQytjT9 — Rich Smith 🥀 (@richsssmith) January 10, 2020