The Bernie Sanders campaign said Sunday that it has raised $20 million for the month of January from a record-setting number of small donors. The news comes just one day before the Iowa caucuses in which the Vermont senator is in a neck-and-neck race with national front-runner Hillary Clinton.
The campaign says that more than 770,000 individuals contributed over the month with an average of $27 per contribution, putting donations past the 3.2 million mark, according to USA Today. The campaign also said that 99.9 percent of the donors gave less than the maximum limit, making them eligible to contribute more later in the race.
The Sanders camp immediately sought to compare their fundraising feat to Clinton's efforts, saying, "Working Americans chipping in a few dollars each month are not only challenging but beating the greatest fundraising machine ever assembled," The Hill reported.
"As Secretary Clinton holds high-dollar fundraisers with the nation's financial elite, our supporters have stepped up in a way that allows Bernie to spend the critical days before the caucuses talking to Iowans about his plans to fix a rigged economy and end a corrupt system of campaign finance," campaign manager Jeff Weaver said, according to Politico.
The Sanders campaign had a different message about fundraising on Friday -- that they had done absolutely none for super PACs. In a tweet, they showed the stark lack of super PAC fundraising they had done.
BREAKING: Sanders super PAC haul
$0.00
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 29, 2016
In a follow up statement, the campaign elaborated on why that figure is important.
"Bernie doesn't want billionaires' money. He doesn't have a super PAC," campaign spokesman Michael Briggs said in a statement. "He believes you can't fix a rigged economy by taking part in the corrupt campaign finance system in which politicians take unlimited sums of money from Wall Street and other powerful special interests and then pretend it doesn't influence them."
