In the midst of his New Hampshire victory speech, Bernie Sanders held an impromptu, one-minute fundraiser and apparently jammed up one of the pillars of Democratic online fundraising, ActBlue.
“I’m not going to New York City to host a fundraiser on Wall Street. Instead I’m going to hold a fundraiser right here, right now, across America. My request is please go to BernieSanders.com and contribute,” Sanders said Tuesday night, as his speech was carried live.
And one minute later, it was over, “So there it is, that’s our fundraiser. Pretty quick.”
But Twitter quickly filled with complaints from Sanders supporters who said their donations were not being processed — the Sanders campaign relies on ActBlue to collect donations through its campaign site.
An email, tweet and call to ActBlue were not returned Tuesday night. But the ActBlue Twitter account spent much of the night responding to dozens of complaints from users who said their donations to Sanders were either not processing or did not appear to go through.
“Huge night! Contributions are processing, receipts are a little delayed. Keep the donations coming!!” ActBlue tweeted.
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver, in an interview with CNN Political Correspondent Brianna Keilar, deferred questions about any fundraising glitches Tuesday night to ActBlue. A Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.
Sanders outraised Clinton in January, raising $20 million to her $15 million and Clinton addressed the digital fundraising deficit in her concession speech Tuesday night, saying her campaign would be looking more online to bolster fundraising.
