HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Senator Obama speaks at Rosemary Clarke Middle School. HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT The lights went out but Obama kept right on going. RELATED STORY: Hopeful faces Yucca Advertisement

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., brought the Democratic presidential race, and its changing tone involving race and gender, to Pahrump Sunday evening, drawing nearly a full house to Rosemary Clarke Middle School.

With Obama's caucus victory in Iowa and Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) slim, 2 percent victory in New Hampshire, Nevada has suddenly found itself vaulted into tie-breaker status.

While Obama campaigned in Las Vegas before making his way over the hump, the Clinton campaign was embroiled in combating backlash for a comment Hillary had made about Martin Luther King Jr. "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Clinton said. "It took a president to get it done."

It was, perhaps, not surprising that Obama opened his speech here the same way he opened up the Democratic debates in December, explaining his "unlikely ambition to change the country" by saying he, like King, believed "'in the fierce urgency of now.'"

The candidate used the town hall meeting to outline his campaign strategy in no uncertain terms, blatantly telling the undecided: "You are now in our sights. We are coming after you."

"My job this evening is to be so persuasive, to answer your questions in such a way, that even though it's night time, a beam of light will come through the roof. It will shine down from the roof, and you will tell yourself, 'I must vote for Barack. I must caucus for Barack,'" the candidate said.

The senator may have been speaking figuratively, but his statement took a literal turn later when the power went out, in fact leaving him in a beam of light from the broadcast media's riser.

That didn't stop Obama, who called out answers to residents' questions to compensate for the dead microphone.

The senator's approach to all of the key campaign issues, including health care, the environment, an economy facing a dire future, and America's foreign policy, is collaboration.

"Given the size of our challenges, I decided they were too large for a broken and divided politics to solve," Obama said. Obama reminded the Pahrump crowd that he didn't accept funding from lobbyists or special interest groups.

"We can go ahead and tell the lobbyists of Washington their days of setting the agenda are over," the candidate said. "They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people."

Obama outlined a number of approaches to rejuvenating the economy, from taking "those tax breaks away from companies that ship jobs overseas and putting those tax breaks to work right here in the United States of America" to raising the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation.

"If you work in this country, you should not be poor," Obama said.

Responding to a resident's question after his speech, Obama outlined both short- and long-term plans to improve people's paychecks.

To avoid a possible recession, Obama's solution involves putting money back into people's pockets right away through an immediate $250 tax rebate for "every American" and a Social Security supplement for senior citizens within six months of getting elected.

"But it will only be going to folks who really need it," Obama said. "Working-class Americans, to folks who are going to spend that money on groceries, on a coat for their kids, what have you, because that will stimulate the economy."

He also proposed a housing fund to help stymie the rising national rate of foreclosures.

The senator's long-term plan was to address the "unbalance" of the economy.

Obama said he would deal with that through "trade policies that aren't just looking out for the corporate bottom line but are also looking out for American workers and consumers."

In addition, Obama endorsed revamping union policies to focus on enforcing laws to ensure fair bargaining practices.

When it came to health care, the senator explained his plan was to work with doctors, lawyers, health care professionals and the American people.

The senator said drug and insurance companies would have a seat at the table, but "they won't be able to buy a chair."

He said plans for reform would be open to the public and televised on C-SPAN.

Foreign policy also brought out Obama's theme of collaborative solutions.

The senator made his trademark promise to have troops withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2009, reminding the audience, "I've opposed this war from the start," but promising to "re-focus on Al-Qaida and Afghanistan."

"We're not going to just talk to our friends when I am president, we're going to talk to our enemies," Obama promised.

"This is our moment, this is our time," Obama said.