Posted on September 10, 2015 by Joanne Boyer

Excerpt:

It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that without Tim Carpenter there simply would not be Bernie 2016. In hindsight, it’s as though Tim Carpenter knew that one of his last efforts just might be the biggest and best yet of all the incredible things he had done in an all too brief life. Believing the impossible was possible is what motivated Tim Carpenter and his work with PDA. The little engine that could, that was Tim. Healthcare not warfare; clean and transparent elections; stopping voter suppression; ending corporate rule. Pick any of the impossible issues facing us today and Tim was there fighting the good fight. But it was on the eve of PDA’s 10-year anniversary celebration set for May 2014 that Tim, who had struggled with health issues his entire life, reached for the stars with one of his boldest ideas yet.

In spring 2014 with Carpenter’s health rapidly failing, he began a PDA-led drive with CredoMobile to garner 25,000 signatures urging Sen. Sanders to run for President in 2016 as a Democrat. The signatures would be presented to Sanders, the scheduled keynote speaker at the PDA 10-year anniversary celebration.

“Tim was the one who got Bernie to come speak at PDA’s 10-year anniversary, which we turned into the first “Run Bernie Run” event,” remembered Steve Cobble, co-founder of PDA. “In his last few days, Tim was still working the phones (for support for Bernie). There was no one like him.”

Not many hours before I learned that he had passed, Tim was on the phone with me, running through the latest numbers from a national petition drive he and PDA had organized to urge Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to seek the presidency. They were over 10,500. A few hours after the call, he e-mailed me, with more numbers. They were over 11,000. That was typical Tim. His enthusiasm for politics was immeasurable, and infectious.