DERRY, N.H. — The first 48 hours of 2016 highlighted an important distinction between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as they ready their final pushes here and in Iowa: They are running for the same office, but not the same role.

Clinton is seeking to be the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer. Sanders is attempting to lead a movement.


The first evidence came in a news release barely 13 hours into the election year, when the front-runner announced she had raised the most presidential primary money of any nonincumbent in an off-year. Bringing in $38 million in 2015’s closing months, she raced past her $100 million primary goal for the year — all while bagging an extra $18 million for other Democrats along the way.

Less than 24 hours later, it was Sanders’ turn to gloat. The underdog, trailing in national polls but leading in this early-voting state, announced he had raked in $33 million in the fourth quarter, part of an overall effort that reeled in more off-year individual contributions than any other candidate ever: 2.5 million.

But just how much did Sanders raise for other Democrats? Nothing.

That $18 million gap is the clearest delineation yet of the fault line in the Democratic primary, a rift that’s as much about fundraising strategy as it is about campaign philosophy. It’s laid bare a contest between an establishment-oriented front-runner who has embraced her role as the party’s de facto leader — promising since the first days of her campaign to raise funds to rebuild local parties from the ground up — and a populist insurgent who only recently started identifying as a Democrat. While Sanders frequently mentions the importance of electing Democrats, he focuses instead on his own “political revolution,” which he contends will sweep other party members into office.

Clinton, for her part, has mobilized her formidable fundraising machine on behalf of Democratic groups nationwide, partly counting on them to flip the switch on their own ground organizations for her in the general election.

She used her joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee and state parties to invest in the central party organization and at least 12 state committees — ranging from Alaska to Florida — in the closing months of 2015, according to public filings.

And while the former secretary of state hosted just one fundraiser for that joint Hillary Victory Fund, that single Manhattan dinner alone raised $8 million for the party.

“Helping Democratic candidates win up and down the ticket is a top priority for Hillary Clinton, which is why she’s also proud to be doing her part to ensure Democrats have the resources we need to win,” explained campaign manager Robby Mook in the fundraising announcement, making the explicit case for financially supporting fellow party members.

Sanders, meanwhile, has never made raising money for the party a priority, despite recently proving his fundraising prowess by signing a letter for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that brought the party group over $1 million, according to a Sanders aide. His campaign inked a fundraising agreement with the DNC in November, a few months after Clinton’s was signed, but it could never nail down a date for any fundraising events with the committee — and the Vermont-based operation now says it’s entirely up to the DNC to identify some dates that work for it.

But that kind of future cooperation is unlikely, given the Vermont senator’s war with the national committee after the campaign recently filed a lawsuit against it over its decision to shut the campaign out of its voter data when Sanders staffers were caught with proprietary Clinton information. Plus, while the independent who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate could be raising money for the party by making calls to major potential contributors, he refuses to do so on principle.

Sanders' campaign hopes such stands are precisely why his "political revolution" won’t need the Democratic infrastructure’s help — top aides believe the sheer breadth of energy from Sanders backers should be more than enough to elect fellow Democrats on his coattails come November 2016.

“Bernie is the only candidate generating the kind of broad-based enthusiasm and excitement that Democrats must have in order to raise funds for a general election campaign and keep the White House and make gains in Congress,” said campaign manager Jeff Weaver in his campaign’s fundraising announcement.

That belief comes, in part, from the campaign’s success in attracting small donations from over 1 million backers: Only “a few hundred” of Sanders’ donors have given the maximum for the campaign cycle, the team said on Saturday, but the effort managed to raise $73 million in 2015.

Still, Sanders spent heavily in the final weeks of 2015 in an effort to build his campaign into a full-scale national effort, and his bank account remains smaller than Clinton’s, despite speculation that he might actually outraise her in 2015. Clinton is set to add to her $112 million in primary dollars with yet another trip to the fundraising hotbed of California later next week, with billionaire Warren Buffett in tow.

While her team stays in close touch with Democratic Party leaders around the country about the state of their fundraising and local field-organizing operations, she holds a $10 million advantage in cash on hand over Sanders, a $38 million to $28 million edge that could figure prominently in on-the-ground organization and television advertising in the intense final weeks in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Already, the campaigns have kicked off their monthlong closing arguments, apparently eager to highlight their campaigns' differences by adopting opposite approaches as they launch a series of dueling town halls on Sunday.

For Sanders, well-established as a progressive hero, it means only now making the forceful case that he is the right candidate for the general election as he increasingly takes on Donald Trump in his public appearances. The senator was even interrupted by a Trump-supporting protester in Massachusetts on Sunday, a sign his strategy is attracting notice.

And for Clinton, it means just now leaning as hard as she has so far on the kind of rhetoric about the wealthiest Americans that has served Sanders so well for so long.

“It’s clear that those at the top are still gaming the system and leaving hard-working American families holding the bag,” she said in a statement on Saturday, promising to go further to raise rich Americans’ effective income-tax rate. “As president, I’ll do what it takes to make sure the super-wealthy are truly paying their fair share."