MARK WAITE / PVT Movie actress Madeleine Stowe walks away after being introduced to members of the Nye County Democratic Party Central Committee, while former Congressman David Bonior chats to the board at the Bob Ruud Community Center Monday. Advertisement

Former Congressman David Bonior of Michigan, accompanied by Hollywood actress Madeleine Stowe, stumped for presidential candidate John Edwards before the Nye County Democratic Party Central Committee at the Bob Ruud Community Center Monday evening.

Bonior, who served for 26 years in the House, is the national chairman of Edwards' presidential campaign. He touted Edwards as a self-made man who will fight hard for working men and women.

Bonior recalled Edwards' rags to riches story, from a simple mill home in South Carolina to become one of the great lawyers in the U.S., taking on big corporations.

"I watched what John did. He went out and he didn't forget his roots," Bonior said. "He led the effort to get the minimum wage on the ballot so people could actually get a raise."

In North Carolina, Bonior said Edwards started the Center on Poverty to provide work opportunities and bring people into the middle class. He traveled the country helping workers form unions in 240 separate organizing drives.

"He became a senator from a red state. This guy can win. He was elected, he beat the Jesse Helms machine," Bonior said, referring to the former arch-conservative North Carolina Republican senator.

Bonior reminded Democrats the ultimate goal is to win in November. He said Edwards polls higher than leading Republicans like John McCain, R-Ariz., Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.

"John's numbers versus those on one-on-one are higher than Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton. So he's a person that can win in the general election," Bonior said.

Among his other accomplishments, Edwards began a college program in a small North Carolina county that let the students of modest means pay for books and tuition by working 10 hours per week, Bonior said.

The House member was also impressed with the fact that Edwards rolls up his sleeves and gets to work, as indicated by his voluntarism after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Bonior said Edwards "not only talks the talk, he walks the walk."

Bonior stressed Edwards willingness to avoid PAC funding.

"John Edwards is the only candidate in this election who has never taken money from a political action committee or Washington lobbyist. He believes, yes, we have to work together to move this country forward, but the only way we're going to do it is if we break that system, and there's some large corporations that aren't going to give up easy," Bonior said.

Edwards beat the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry and the oil industry in the courts already, Bonior said. He compared Edwards with former President Teddy Roosevelt, standing up to the big trusts and railroads 100 years ago, and with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt again in 1932.

"He's a fighter and he's persistent. We need a tough, persistent president after all the damage we've seen now over the past seven y ears," Bonior said. "John's life has been dedicated to social and economic justice, and that's why I'm for him."

Edwards was at 27 percent according to a Reno Gazette-Journal survey released Monday, within 5 percentage points, or the margin of error, of frontrunner Barack Obama, Bonior said.

Stowe listened while Bonior did the talking. But the Hollywood actress, who rode discreetly into Pahrump, has a long list of movie credits, including a starring role in "Stakeout" in 1987, in the 1990 movie "The Two Jakes" with Jack Nicholson and as a frontier woman in "Last of the Mohicans."