Bernie Sanders Trying To Make The Most Of His Booming 2016 Crowds
By KEN THOMAS and ALANNA DURKIN
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is packing `em in: 10,000 people in Madison, Wisconsin. More than 2,500 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Another 7,500 this week in Portland, Maine.
The trick for the independent senator from Vermont is to turn all that excitement into something more than a summer fling. Will those supporters caucus for him on a cold winter night in Iowa? Will they volunteer to help him get out the vote a week later in snowy New Hampshire?
"We've only been a declared candidate for two months," Sanders said recently in tiny Storm Lake, Iowa. "In a certain sense, our momentum is outpacing our infrastructure."
In presidential politics, infrastructure matters. For Sanders to turn his insurgent campaign into a viable challenge against unquestioned front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, he will need to covert those willing to come hear him speak in the summer of 2015 into volunteers, donors and - ultimately - voters in 2016.
For all the crowds that Sanders is attracting, and the attention he's getting for them, he remains far behind Clinton in the work of building a campaign organization. He has a few more than 50 paid staffers in all. Clinton has nearly 50 organizers in Iowa alone, as well as at least one in every other state.
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