Meet the people coming to see Bernie Sanders in Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa — As the Democratic presidential field descended on Iowa this weekend, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit generated more headlines — but Democratic rival Bernie Sanders drew more people.

The independent senator from Vermont, who rails against greedy corporate interests ruining the country’s democracy, drew overflow audiences nearly everywhere he went here over the weekend.

That included Des Moines, where close to 800 people streamed to a university auditorium on Friday night, and Waterloo, where more than 500 people gathered in a theater on Sunday afternoon.

The Vermont senator had the support of 16 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers in a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg News Iowa poll earlier this month, to Clinton’s 57 percent.

So who’s coming to hear him speak?

This weekend, there were those fully sold on the self-described democratic socialist — they were the ones wearing “Bernie for president” t-shirts and holding the “Feel the Bern” signs. There were some others shopping for an alternative to Clinton, the formidable front-runner. Still others were merely curious about the fuss surrounding the frumpy politician who’s seen his poll numbers surge.

Terry Pensel, a Web developer who traveled more than 90 minutes from Guttenberg to see Sanders in Waterloo, was among those in the fully-sold category.

“I don’t want to bash Hillary Clinton or any of the other Democrats, but I don’t see them having a plan to deal with the concentrated wealth,” said Pensel, 47, as he left the auditorium with several yard signs and bumper stickers tucked under his arm. “They’re giving lip service to a lot of the issues Bernie has been talking about for a long, long time.”

Those issues, as Sanders described them, include the the “grotesque level of wealth and income inequality” in the country, the corrosive effects of big money on politics and the “disastrous” trade deals the country has entered into.

While Pensel was clearly pumped up about Sanders’s prospects, he also complained that the media — the corporate-controlled media, as he described it — has given Clinton so much more attention than Sanders.

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