Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) flatly stated: “Corporations are going to have to pay more taxes.”

Julián Castro, former housing secretary and San Antonio mayor, said that “housing should be a human right.”

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Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper floated increasing the minium wage “beyond $15” in some parts of the country.

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Even Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), viewed as a moderate, took aim at the pharmaceutical industry in her remarks, saying that company stocks went up when Trump announced his plan on drug prices but adding that “that is not going to happen when I come there. Because what I’m going to do is bring your prices down.”

The forum, sponsored by the Service Employees International Union and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, attracted all of the top Democratic presidential candidates in 2008.

This time, two top contenders were missing. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who frequently takes credit for moving the party to the left, skipped to launch a series of house parties across the country. Former vice president Joe Biden, who entered the race Thursday and has supported laws that benefit large banks in the past, was also absent.

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It was the first major multicandidate event held in Nevada, which will be the third state to vote in the Democratic nomination process. So far the state has garnered less attention than New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina.

The theme was fitting: Nearly 14 percent of Nevada workers are in unions, well above the U.S. average.

Organizers hoped the candidates would come armed with specifics, rather than offering platitudes about supporting unions. To help, the leaders of the nearly 2 million-member union put out a list of criteria that candidates must meet to secure its coveted endorsement, which included the willingness to call out specific companies by name.

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Harris played ball, saying that as president she would be willing to call up the CEO of McDonald’s and demand better wages. “You can’t go around talking about the golden arches as a symbol of the best of America when you are not conducting yourself in the best way in terms of supporting the best of America,” she said.

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The forum’s topic — and its focus on specifics — was tailor-made for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), an economic populist who received by far the warmest welcome from the crowd. “I’ve got a plan,” the policy-heavy ­candidate said to hoots of support.

It gave her a venue to talk in detail about some of her big, but less flashy, proposals, including one that would let workers elect 40 percent of the members of large corporate boards. It’s an idea reviled on Wall Street.

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“Lets be blunt, people who have power don’t give it up easily,” she said. When she finished, Warren earned the event’s only standing ovation.

Klobuchar used the forum to focus on a key theme of her candidacy: breaking up large companies. “What you do about this consolidated power — we have to do more with our antitrust laws,” a line that was met by silence from the audience.

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“I didn’t expect a big applause line from that,” Klobuchar added. “It sounds really boring.”

Former congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has a more conservative record on economic issues such as banking regulations, agreed with most of the pro-union agenda. But he talked about it in a different way, arguing that an increase in the minimum wage would benefit the companies.

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“Your productivity at work is going to be so much greater,” O’Rourke said, when asked by moderator Steven Greenhouse, a former New York Times reporter, how he would persuade conservatives to support the idea.

When prompted to defend the pay increase to critics who say that minimum-wage jobs largely go to teenagers, O’Rourke displayed his signature charisma with an impassioned response that resonated with the audience.

“A $15 dollar minimum wage is not just for, as some would have us believe, that 16- or 17- or 18-year-old who might be working at a fast-food restaurant,” O’Rourke said. “It might be for a 40- or 50- or 60-year-old who’s working at a fast-food restaurant, who’s working their second job.”

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Although Sanders didn’t attend, he talked about some of the same economic issues Saturday, taking credit for moving them to the forefront of the Democratic primaries.

“The ideas that we are talking about — ideas that a few years ago, you may recall, sounded pretty radical,” Sanders said, in a video broadcast live to the house parties. “When we talked about raising the minimum wage to a living wage, $15 an hour — you may recall that people thought we were nuts.”

David Weigel contributed to this report.