Here's how its done, folks. Republican has become a dirty word for McCain--so when you see his name in a newstory he's just a "presidential candidate" and not a Republican. At least as far as Reuters is concerned. Match this text with the one that appears directly below it in today's Globe.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate John McCain plans a wide-ranging campaign that would go after voters often ignored by his Republican party, which in the past has focused on getting conservatives to the polls.
"We need to go all over America ... (and) compete hard in every section of the country," McCain, the party's presumptive nominee, said on "Fox News Sunday" in an interview taped on Friday.
McCain, who still has not won over many conservatives, made clear he planned a broader campaign than those waged by President George W. Bush when he faces either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate in the November election.
The Arizona senator said he would go after votes of blacks and Hispanics, two traditionally strong Democratic blocs, as well as independents and young voters who have been attracted to the Democratic campaigns this year.
"I'm not sure that the old red state, blue state scenario that prevailed for the last several elections works," McCain said, referring to the way television networks depict Republican states as red and Democratic states as blue on election night.
"I think most of these states that we have either red or blue are going to be up for grabs."
As an example he promised a fight for California which has become heavily Democratic over the past two decades and has often been written off by Republicans.
BUTTE, Mont.—Hunting for votes out West, Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday rejected the idea that the region's sparsely populated states aren't important in the presidential race and renewed his promise to appoint a high-level adviser on Indian issues if elected
Obama also cast his usual message in more Western-friendly terms, talking about clean-coal technology as a way of protecting Montana's beautiful mountains and civil liberties as part of the state's tradition of independence.
An Obama supporter had scolded all the presidential candidates earlier for not addressing Western issues.
Montana and neighboring states have only a handful of delegates, but every one of them is valuable as Obama seeks to keep Hillary Rodham Clinton from narrowing his lead heading toward the nomination convention.
Obama, speaking at the Montana Democrats' annual Mansfield-Metcalf Dinner, mocked the suggestion from Clinton's campaign earlier this year that his lead is suspect because he won lightly contested small states that hold caucuses while losing some big states with primary elections.
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