NASHUA, N.H. -- Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who’s made limited headway with African American voters despite drawing large crowds on the campaign trail, on Saturday pledged “a significant expansion” in outreach to minority communities.

“We’re going to significantly increase that,” the Democratic presidential hopeful told reporters after a morning campaign stop here. “The views that we hold are important to all Americans … but to be honest with you, they’re probably more relevant to black and Hispanic voters … because the poverty rate in those communities is even higher than whites.”

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, cited his support to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and offer free college tuition as examples.

In a later interview, Sanders said he plans to add members to his campaign staff to help with the effort.

“We’re going to be bringing people into our campaign who will give us increased capability of reaching out to the African American community and the Hispanic community,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Black voters are a crucial constituency in the Democratic nominating process, particularly after the contest moves beyond Iowa and New Hampshire to South Carolina and other states with larger African American populations, where Hillary Rodham Clinton is a well-established figure.

In recent weeks, Sanders has seen his crowds swell in early nominating states and other places where he’s traveled. His audiences numbered in the thousands recently in both Minneapolis and Denver.

Sanders represents a state that is 95 percent white. In a piece in the New York Times last week outlining his challenge, the senator’s advisers acknowledged that he remains largely unknown among African American voters, despite a civil rights record that includes leading sit-ins in the 1960s.

Speaking here to a crowd of more than 500 packed into a community college gymnasium, Sanders made a passing reference to having more recently joined African American workers in North Carolina on the picket lines in support of raising the minimum wage.

During his hour-long stump speech, however, he made no mention of the recent massacre at a historic African American church in Charleston, S.C., that left nine parishoners dead. The episode has prompted Clinton and another Democratic, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D), to make gun control a prominent part of their pitch.

Sanders, whose state is rural and home to many hunters, has a mixed record on gun control, including a 1993 vote against the landmark Brady Bill, which mandated federal background checks on firearms purchasers.

Asked by an audience member here Saturday if he is willing to take on the National Rifle Association, Sanders defended his record, saying the gun rights group has given him a lifetime rating of “somewhere between D and F.”

Sanders noted the rural nature of his state, saying that “guns in Chicago and Los Angeles are not the same thing as guns in New Hampshire and Vermont.”

But he relayed that he has during his career voted for bills to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

“I think my record is pretty strong,” he said.