Former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards told Las Vegas workers on Tuesday that initiatives to raise the minimum wage in Nevada and elsewhere show America is ready for a "grass-roots movement" to attack poverty and re-energize unions.

"We're going to be successful every single place that this is on the ballot because the American people are for this," Edwards said. "This is a basic moral issue for the country, and everyone knows it's the right thing to do."

Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and 2004 running mate of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., spoke at the local AFL-CIO union hall as part of his One America Committee, a political action group based on the populist message that got him elected to his sole term in the U.S. Senate in 1998. He was speaking in support of a Nevada ballot measure that would amend the state's constitution to raise the minimum wage by $1 an hour.

The Give Nevada a Raise initiative, which will be on November's ballot, is likely to pass. A recent Review-Journal poll found more than 70 percent of Nevadans supported the proposal.

Edwards noted that similar drives have been undertaken in Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Montana and Ohio. Such popular movements prove that Congress, by not raising the national minimum wage in more than a decade, has "thwarted" the will of the people, he said.

"Our national minimum wage is a national embarrassment," Edwards said. "Five dollars and fifteen cents an hour -- no one can live on five dollars and fifteen cents an hour."

To vigorous applause, Edwards said the government should make it easier for unions to organize workers. "It was the union that made those jobs great jobs, with good pay, decent benefits and health-care coverage," he said of the manufacturing jobs now being lost overseas.

"If someone can join the Republican party by putting their name on a card, then workers in the workplace all across America ought to be able to join the union by doing exactly the same thing," he said.

Taking questions from reporters after his speech, Edwards was asked if he was running for president. "I'm thinking about it very seriously," he said.

In addition to the One America Committee, Edwards directs the Center on Policy, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina. He said a solution for the 37 million Americans living in poverty must be multi-faceted, including immigration reform, tax credits, access to higher education, universal health care, reducing teen pregnancy and "addressing the hopelessness that particularly young, inner-city African-American men feel."

On immigration, he said the U.S. must do "a much better job on the southern border" while also "honoring the work and responsibility" of illegal immigrants by giving them a way to become legal residents and citizens. He said illegals make up "a sizable chunk" of the poverty problem he's been touring the country to speak about over the last year.

Edwards also reiterated his position he was wrong to support the Iraq war. To address the situation now, which he called a low-level civil war, he said 40,000 troops should immediately be withdrawn to send a message to Iraqis that they must take responsibility.

The Nevada Republican Party greeted Edwards' visit with a critical statement highlighting his background as a trial lawyer, saying, "Senator Edwards made his vast fortune by taking advantage of some of the most desperate members of society at the expense of small-town doctors, advocating what is now considered junk science in medical malpractice cases."

Edwards also spoke Tuesday morning at a convention of coal miners at the Riviera, where he criticized Democrats for moving toward the political center rather than standing up for unions.

He also called the federal budget proposed by President Bush "immoral."