If you attended the rally for Ben Carson at America the Beautiful Park this summer, chances are you ran into the Super PAC that’s trying to get the retired neurosurgeon elected president.

Volunteers for The 2016 Committee were there handing out small paperback books “Ben Carson: Rx for America,” by John Philip Sousa IV.

“We printed 1.4 million copies of that book and only have about 100,000 left,” Sousa said in an interview with The Gazette Monday. “They are flying out the door as fast as we can print them.”

Sousa will be in Colorado Springs on Feb. 4 talking about his efforts to draft Carson for the 2016 presidential race (Run Ben Run) and now his efforts to get Carson into office (Win Ben Win).

Tickets are $50 for the event at Active Release Techniques, 9240 Explorer Drive, Suite 210.

Executive Director of the El Paso County GOP Daniel Cole said both the campaign and the PAC for Carson seem highly organized.

“The Carson people are everywhere, always wearing his T-shirts, always passing out literature,” he said.

Hundreds attended the Carson rally downtown and both the campaign and the PAC were active.

“When people think about a Super PAC they think about high rollers and big dollars, and we decided to go in exactly the opposite direction,” Sousa said, noting a great deal of their contributions are small donations from individuals. “Historically PACs and Super PACS have been in the role of running negative ads and beating up the other candidates. We haven’t done that.”

He said that’s not who Carson is.

“We wanted our actions to be a reflection of what he stands for,” Sousa said.

Political Action Committees are independent expenditure committees, meaning they can’t coordinate with a candidate or a candidate’s campaign. The Supreme Court Case decision on Citizens United allowed corporations, individuals and unions to give unlimited donations to Super PACS.

For example, Right to Rise USA, a Super PAC supporting Jeb Bush for president, had reported $103 million in contributions through June, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Sousa’s PAC is comparatively small, with $2.5 million in total contributions at the end of June and $1.3 million transferred from the National Draft Ben Carson for President PAC. Sousa said the focus has been on full-time staffers across the nation and a horde of volunteers.

And now, he said, “all of our guns are aimed at Iowa.” That first caucus on Feb. 1 could make or break some Republicans in the race.

Sousa said volunteers are writing handwritten notes to undecided voters in Iowa and running phone banks.

“Dr. Carson is not going to be the dictatorial kind of president that we have today. Dr. Carson is going to bring both sides together,” he said.

Sousa has run for Congress, worked as a campaign consultant and in the offices of state lawmakers. But he said Carson’s ability to unite America drew him back into politics. Sousa is the direct descendant of John Philip Sousa who wrote “The Washington Post” in 1889, the quintessential military march.

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Contact Megan Schrader: 286-0644

Twitter @CapitolSchrader