About 30 minutes after Bernie Sanders was declared the runaway winner of Tuesday’s New Hampshire Democratic primary ― but roughly an hour before the Vermont senator took the stage for his victory speech ― his campaign emailed supporters seeking to turn their euphoria into cold, hard cash.

The email, signed “in solidarity” by the candidate himself, warned that “our victory tonight will prompt a desperate response from the nation’s financial elite and the political establishment who want to stop our campaign to transform America.” The way to fend off the coming attacks “and take our country back from the billionaire class,” Sanders wrote, over a hyperlink to the campaign’s donation website, was a $3 contribution.


The donations flooded in at a record-setting pace ― $6.3 million in the 23 hours after the polls closed and counting ― at one point coming so furiously they overwhelmed the interface that processes them. The gusher was fueled further by Sanders’ victory speech, in which he boasted of his unprecedented small donor fundraising and implored supporters to go to “please go to Berniesanders.com and contribute,” as well as a follow up email from his campaign manager Jeff Weaver highlighting the fundraising surge. “This is what a political revolution looks like, sisters and brothers,” Weaver declared.

Indeed, Sanders’ campaign has melded its fundraising into its core mission in a way that is without precedent in American political history. It’s more than a means to an end. It is the purpose of his campaign ― the vehicle for regular people to buy into the idea that they can fight back against a moneyed elite that has tilted the scales against them.

It’s a formula that has transformed the 74-year-old socialist from a fringe figure in Democratic politics to a legitimate contender for the party’s presidential nomination, powering him past his establishment-backed rival Hillary Clinton in January fundraising and all but guaranteeing a protracted primary battle.

And, despite appearances, the strategy behind Sanders’ small-donor juggernaut is deceptively sophisticated, using cutting-edge technology and techniques to create a perfect fundraising storm never before seen in presidential politics.

The architect of the strategy is a 39-year-old former Marine named Tim Tagaris, who has quietly developed a reputation as the left’s leading practitioner of digital and email fundraising.

Tagaris referred questions about his approach and Sanders’ strategy to a campaign spokesman, who did not respond to requests for comment.

But former colleagues describe Tagaris as an unabashed liberal, who is a perfect fit both for Sanders and for the anti-establishment fervor within the Democratic base that the candidate has harnessed.

“Internet fundraising is about taking potential energy and converting it into kinetic energy, and nobody has done that better than Bernie Sanders,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, a veteran Democratic operative who hosts a show about progressive politics on SiriusXM satellite radio. “Tim and his team are maximizing that. Their emails are superior. They really tap into small-donor psychology. Small donors go where they’re needed. If you’re a candidate who can raise all the money in the world from the establishment, they don’t think they’re needed. Bernie Sanders, his whole message is that he’s running against the establishment, and that their $20 matters.”

Rabin-Havt worked briefly with Tagaris in the Democratic National Committee’s digital department in 2005 under former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who was among the first politicians to tap into the potency of the Internet as a way to raise money and rally supporters.

A Chicago native, Tagaris got his start in politics on the 2004 congressional campaign of Ohio Democrat Jeff Seemann. The candidate lost but was an early favorite of the online Netroots movement that challenged centrist Democrats from the left ― particularly those who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq (a group that, Sanders often points out, included Clinton, but not him). Tagaris started blogging himself, drawing some attention in the Netroots movement. He came to Washington to work on Dean’s DNC online communications team under Joe Rospars, who would go on to become digital director of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, which was then seen as the gold standard for small-dollar fundraising.

But Tagaris ― a passionate fan of the perennially disappointing Chicago Cubs who associates say identifies more with underdogs ― grew frustrated with veteran Democratic operatives who shrugged off the power of the Internet.

“They just didn’t get it,” Tagaris told the authors of the book “Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics.”

Tagaris helped open everyone’s eyes to just how effective the Internet could be in rallying supporters when he went to work as new media director for the 2006 Connecticut Senate campaign of anti-war champion Ned Lamont. Riding strong online support from around the country, Lamont shocked the political world by defeating then-Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, though Lieberman ran as an independent in the general election, ultimately defeating Lamont.

Tagaris honed his expertise in online advertising and email fundraising over the next few years in a variety of gigs, including the long-shot 2008 presidential campaign of Chris Dodd, Sen. Chris Murphy’s successful 2012 campaign, and at a union-backed super PAC. In 2013, he became a partner in a boutique online firm called Revolution Messaging started by Scott Goodstein, who had helped run then-Sen. Obama’s pioneering online operation in 2008.

Sanders’ campaign retained Revolution last May to run its online fundraising, social media, Web design and digital advertising operations. Other Revolution staffers working with the campaign include Michael Whitney, who has run major email campaigns for liberal heavyweights Change.org and MoveOn, and Keegan Goudiss, who handles online advertising. And online organizing specialists Zack Exley and Becky Bond work directly for the campaign.

Another pioneer in liberal online organizing, who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen as supporting Sanders, said of the senator’s team: “Some of these folks invented Internet campaigning methods back before Obama ran. Others rose with Obama or are doing their first campaign. They know narrative, strategy, tactics, innovations, expansion of the medium into more than an ATM, but into a full blown channel for participation. They are badasses.”

The Sanders campaign fundraising program has produced previous huge surges in online donations by quickly capitalizing on standout moments in the candidate’s debate performances or speeches, as well as by seizing on attacks from Clinton and her deep-pocketed allies in the Party's establishment wing.

Edward Erikson, a consultant who works with prominent Sanders supporter Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream fame) and other activists trying to reduce the role of big money in politics, said Sanders himself deserves the credit for motivating small donors.

“However, that message ― paid for by Bernie, not the billionaires ― is reinforced in all of his communications. And I think that’s an extremely smart strategy,” said Erikson. “That message is motivating people to give, it’s making people feel like their contribution can make a difference.”

It’s not dissimilar from the approach that Clinton and some of the GOP candidates have sought to use. Clinton in particular has sought to highlight her appeal to small donors, repeatedly emailing her list asking for donations of $1, which would drive down the amount of her average donation.

During her concession speech Tuesday in New Hampshire, she noted that “more than 700,000 people have contributed to this campaign, the vast majority giving less than $100. I know that doesn’t fit with the narrative.”

But the numbers definitively prove that her small-donor fundraising ― like that of the GOP candidates ― pales in comparison to that of Sanders.

The average donation to his campaign is $27, as Sanders often points out ― so often that the figure prompts knowing nods from his supporters and even became a joke on “Saturday Night Live.”

Through the end of 2015, the Sanders campaign had raised $54 million in donations of $200 or less, accounting for 72 percent of its total fundraising, according to FEC filings. That’s far more total cash ― and a far higher percentage of overall cash ― from small donors than Clinton (who raised 16 percent of her $116 million from small donors) or any of the GOP presidential candidates. In fact, the percentage of cash Sanders is raising from small donors is more than twice the percentage Obama raised from small donors during his groundbreaking 2008 general election campaign, which his supporters dubbed a “small donor revolution.” (To be sure, the percentage of money from small donors tends to decrease as campaigns wear on and many small donors continue giving, and ultimately cross the $200 threshold).

Plus, as Sanders routinely notes, he lacks a big-money super PAC like the ones devoted to Clinton, which raised $58 million in 2015.

“I do not have a super PAC, and I do not want a super PAC," Sanders said during his Tuesday night victory speech. “I am overwhelmed, and I am deeply moved far more than I can express in words by the fact that our campaign’s financial support comes from more than 1 million Americans who have made more than 3.7 million individual contributions.”

That, he pointed out, “is more individual contributions than any candidate in the history of the United States up until this point in an election” ― even than Obama’s campaigns.

And, Sanders asked the raucous crowd, “You know what that average contribution was?”

“Twenty-seven dollars,” they answered back in unison.

