Resource teacher Preston Picus, who is running for a seat in the U.S. Congress’s 12th District representing the San Francisco area, is preparing for the June 7 California congressional primaries. Picus is running as an independent against Democrat Nancy Pelosi, Republican Bob Miller, and Green Party representative Barry Herman. Of these four candidates, the top two vote-getters will run against each other in the November 8 general election.

Picus’s campaign has garnered considerable attention since it commenced a year ago. “We have built a lot of steam,” he said. “I’ve been in contact with about 185,000 voters in San Francisco…through social media, emails, giving speeches, people on the streets every day going out and talking [to voters].”

Picus has run his campaign on a foundation of small money, he accepts maximum donations of $540, the idea that the average American can run for political office, and his tagline, “Let’s get in a fistfight with corruption.”

Picus was an early supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and Sanders’s voters have been drawn to these aspects of Picus’s agenda.

“Being an early endorser of the Bernie Sanders campaign, and having most groups [such as] Bay Area for Bernie [and] Vets for Bernie endorse me, has led a lot of people interested in the Bernie Sanders movement to become interested [in my campaign],” he said.

“On the negative side, I’ve had several people donate $540 who would have loved to donate $5,400,” Picus said. “So I definitely could have had more money [if I’d accepted larger donations]. On the positive side, I haven’t been going out trying to find people to give me a lot of money….When I talk to people, I’m just trying to get people to believe in what I’m doing, which has really helped me focus my campaign on a wide appeal.”

“It’s really been freeing to not have to chase that dollar, and we’ve learned a lot of things about how to do things more cheaply. There is so much waste in the political arena, there are so many companies that are feasting on the fat of millions of dollars that are floating around. You don’t have to use them, but nobody really takes the time to think about that because once you raise a million and a half, you pay $40,000 for data that you can get for free, you pay $20,000 for a specialist for something that you could probably do yourself.”