WISE, Va. – Presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama on Wednesday focused on the struggles of the nation’s poor _ from rural Appalachia to Washington’s urban Anacostia _ in competing speeches that underscored the fierce fight for the Democratic nomination.

Edwards was wrapping up his eight-state poverty tour with stops in Virginia and Kentucky, the latter where Democratic icon Robert F. Kennedy spoke nearly 40 years ago in his plea to help the nation’s forgotten.

Unwilling to cede the issue to Edwards, Obama spoke at a recreation center in the nation’s capital, and in a jab at his rival, argued that combatting poverty was hardly new for him, a one-time community organizer in Chicago.

“This kind of poverty is not an issue I just discovered for the purposes of a campaign, it is the cause that led me to a life of public service almost twenty-five years ago,” the Illinois senator said in prepared remarks.

Obama struck a populist tone.

“The streets here are close to our capital, but far from the people it represents. These Americans cannot hire lobbyists to roam the halls of Congress on their behalf, and they cannot write thousand-dollar campaign checks to make their voices heard,” he said. “They suffer most from a politics that has been tipped in favor of those with the most money, and influence, and power.”

Obama opened his remarks by describing Kennedy’s poverty tour four decades earlier.

In southwest Virginia, Edwards held an outdoor round-table and listened to stories about indigent health care from Appalachian doctors, community leaders and the working poor. Thousands of patients in the region rely on an annual mobile health fair as their sole source of care.

Dr. Joe Smitty, a volunteer with the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corp., told Edwards “you have arrived in a part of America where health care is fragmented.”

Smitty said heart disease, lung cancer and black lung are common problems in the impoverished Appalachian region. However, several in the group said it didn’t want Edwards’ poverty tour to reinforce negative stereotypes of the region.

“These challenges don’t define the people of this area,” Edwards responded. “Their strength and defiance and courage define them. We’re here to help.”

The former North Carolina senator said lack of access to health care isn’t limited to the Appalachian region _ it’s a national problem. He told the volunteer doctors that they shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of indigent health care alone.

“We have to do something about this,” he said. “This is not OK.”

At a later stop in eastern Kentucky, Edwards held a forum with youth to discuss problems in Appalachia. During the forum at Appalshop Theater in Whitesburg, Edwards listened as youth described problems with coal companies, prescription drug abuse and health care.

Edwards’ tour began Sunday night in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. He visited sites in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler in Washington contributed to this report.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)