Ahead of Florida primary, Sanders supporters rally in Ybor (3) Credit: Kimberly DeFalco

Ybor City felt the Bern last Saturday night, and not the burning hangover headache that it is so, so, used to.

In light of Hillary Clinton’s defeat of Senator Bernie Sanders in Saturday’s South Carolina Primary, his supporters are buckling down.

With Florida’s Presidential Preference Primary looming on March 15, the group Tampa Bay for Bernie hosted a fundraising event at The Dirty Shame in Ybor.

Tampa Bay For Bernie is an independent group from the national campaign, a completely grassroots effort in tune with the Vermont senator’s following. They hope to further spread the word about Sanders, a passionate, self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, over the coming weeks. An independent poll performed by Quinnipiac University found Sanders trailing 26 percentage points, 59% to 33%, behind Clinton in Florida last week, which was obviously not good news for Sanders supporters.

A Tampa Bay For Bernie volunteer poses at a fundraiser this past Saturday in Ybor. Credit: Kimberly DeFalco

“We want to close the gap as much as possible,” said Sanders supporter Amos Miers, who helped organize the event. “We are shooting to get [within] 10 points.”

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Richard Bittman, who pulled together the location and the live bands, organized the event logistics. The campaign fundraising and relationship to the national campaign was handled by Miers, who's familiar with the Federal Communications Commission’s laws on campaign fundraising.

The Bernie Sanders’s national campaign provided Miers and the event with promotional materials along with a few thousand donation envelopes. According to Miers, the Tampa Bay For Bernie will have crossed the $40,000 dollar mark in its fundraising and has some 8,000 people on its email list.