PORTLAND, Maine — He's had unexpectedly large turnouts at recent rallies in Michigan and Iowa, and Monday night here was yet another example of how Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign is energizing voters.
More than 7,500 people turned out for his appearance at the Cross Insurance Arena, where he spoke for more than an hour on a wide-ranging platform that puts income inequality front and center.
The crowd was so large that Sanders' remarks were delayed for a few minutes so that people could be seated.
His campaign says he's raised $15 million dollars since April, from tens of thousands of small donations. And that's something that suits Sanders just fine. His populist message is all about getting millionaires and billionaires out of politics and restoring the middle class.
"Let me be as clear as I can be," Sanders says. "There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of one percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. There is something profoundly wrong when most of the new income is going to the top one percent."
Sanders calls income inequality the great moral, economic and political issue of our time. It's a disgrace, he says, and it's not sustainable.
"We are going to send a message to the billionaire class and that message is: You can't have it all," he says. "You can't get huge tax breaks when children in America go hungry. You cannot keep sending jobs to China when millions in this country desperately need work."
Sanders pledged to support federal legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. He supports a single-payer health care system, ending the war on drugs and paid family and medical leave.
Among the proposals that garnered the most applause is his plan to offer free tuition at public colleges and universities by taxing Wall Street and to reduce student debt.
That resonates with 18-year-old Chris Torres of Massachusetts, who had the day off from his summer camp job and drove to Maine with some friends to hear Sanders' speech. Torres goes to a private university where he says he's accumulating loads of debt.
"I feel like everyone should be able to afford it," he says. "And that's hard for a lot of people in America and I want that to be a reality. I mean tuition is just a drop in the bucket in the whole cost but it's something and it gets you there."
Thomas and Irene Moore also came from out of state to hear Sanders. They're Democrats from Connecticut who say they've been interested in the independent senator for about two years, even before he announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president.
"He's for the regular person, the colleges, for the middle class, fix the politics, the voting, all of those regular common things, raise the minimum wage," Thomas Moore says. "Just to let people live, that's all, you know?"
The Moores say they also like Hillary Clinton, and while she may have more money and be perceived by some polls as the current frontrunner, the couple are not convinced that she's got the nomination locked up.
For his part, Sanders says the election is not about him, he says it's about a movement.
"When we stand together, as white and black and Hispanic and gay and straight and woman and man, when we stand together and demand that this country works for all of us rather than the few, we will transform America and with your help that is what we're going to do," he says.
Sanders' communications director, Michael Briggs, says he's encouraged not only by the size of the crowds that are showing up to support the senator but by some of the measures that track Sanders' ability to engage people on social media.
Right now he says Sanders is doing better than either the White House or the New York Times, and that, he says, is significant less than six months into the campaign.
