McCain the Maverick wants to paint blue states red

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EXETER, N.H. — Every candidate tells his audience that its votes are crucial to his success, and John McCain was no different here Wednesday.

“I intend to be back and back and back, because I love it here,” McCain said at the end of a town hall meeting held to thank the state that launched and then relaunched his presidential hopes. “But also, a little straight talk, because I need to win New Hampshire to win the presidency.”

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Conversations with McCain backers and other Republican operatives, most of whom insisted on anonymity, reflect a party intent on altering the red state/blue state paradigm.

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Though still very early in the planning stages, McCain aides have begun eyeing between 20 and 25 states that could be competitive, a list that includes some places that are anything but rock-ribbed conservative. Next month, they’ll make this case symbolically by sending the candidate on a different-kind-of-Republican tour into places where party members typically don’t tread.

By virtue of his maverick brand, nontraditional stances on key issues and his Western roots, McCain may be able to compete in states that were far out of reach for Bush and that have otherwise been trending away from Republicans.

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McCain’s character-based appeal and his “straight talk” image has enabled him to win over primary voters who disagree with him on key issues such as the war in Iraq.

It’s this identification, in which persona trumps policy, that McCain can use to reach out to those who were turned off by Bush, backers say.

“He moves politics from the culture wars that have dominated for the past decade to a different matrix,” said Davis. Even though McCain holds mostly traditional views, “he’s not viewed as a cultural conservative.”

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For that reason, say McCain aides and unaffiliated strategists alike, the nominee could compete in states that have a history of rewarding mavericks and that count significant numbers of independent voters on their rolls.

Such a list starts here, in famously flinty New Hampshire, one of only three states to switch allegiance in presidential voting between 2000 and 2004. But it could also include Maine, which has elected an independent governor and which gave Ross Perot his highest vote share in 1992. Connecticut would be tougher but has also elected two third-party candidates to statewide office (Lowell Weicker and Joseph I. Lieberman).

The upper Midwest is another region that, while trending Democratic, has the sort of free-thinking voter that McCain could appeal to. Wisconsin, in particular, is viewed with high hopes by Republicans.

On the West Coast, Washington and Oregon fall into this category, with the latter seen as more promising because it lacks a dominant liberal population center like metro Seattle and includes a sizable rural population.

Beyond McCain’s independent image, of course, there are votes that will help him with blue state voters — the same votes that underscore why he’s caused his own party heartburn.

Mitt Romney rattled off “McCain-Kennedy,” “McCain-Lieberman” and “McCain-Feingold” like they were four-letter words toward the end of the GOP primary, but it’s precisely immigration, the environment and campaign finance reform that the Arizona senator’s camp hopes will attract targeted unaligned and Democratic voters.

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McCain’s background as a veteran Western politician might also prove to be an asset. Aides think his ability to talk fluently on regional issues such as water rights and public land use could help in a part of the country that views Easterners — politicians and otherwise — with suspicion. This could help him in large swaths of Washington and Oregon, as well as in the “defensive” red states in the mountain West and Southwest.

And then there is California.

“I intend to contest all over America, including the state of California,” McCain told reporters when asked after his town hall meeting about his desire to move beyond the red-blue paradigm.

The Golden State hadn’t even been mentioned in the question, but McCain wants it known that he’ll compete there.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9019.html