A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

MAVERICK WANTS TO PAINT BLUE STATES RED
(Jonathan Martin, Politico)
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... 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. This potential, say McCain strategists and other Republicans, could amount to the GOP’s ace in the hole in an otherwise dismal political climate.

RACE TANGLED IN THE RACE
(Kevin Merida, Washington Post)
The debate about racial preference vs. equal opportunity has coursed through society for decades, and not smoothly. We've argued passionately about who gets admitted to college and why, who gets a job promotion and why, which company gets awarded a contract and why. But affirmative action in pursuit of the presidency? Now, that's a new one.

DEM FIGHT CONFLICTS SOME WOMEN, BLACKS
(Kathy Kiely, USA Today)
For months, Democratic party leaders have argued the nomination fight is good for the party, drawing voters to the polls in record-breaking numbers. Now, some express misgivings. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that "some of the exchange is not at the highest level" and expressed a hope that it "will return to that level." In an interview with The Washington Post website this week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer expressed concern about the impact of a prolonged fight between Obama and Clinton, each trying to make history as the first African-American or first female president. "When they attack one another, it's not just an attack on the other candidate," Hoyer said. "It is taken, I think, by women and by African-Americans in a more personal sense."

CLINTON'S ROLE IN HEALTH PLAN DISPUTED
(Susan Milligan, Boston Globe)
In campaign speeches, Clinton describes the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, as an initiative "I helped to start." Addressing Iowa voters in November, Clinton said, "in 1997, I joined forces with members of Congress and we passed the State Children's Health Insurance Program." Clinton regularly cites the number of children in each state who are covered by the program, and mothers of sick children have appeared at Clinton campaign rallies to thank her. But the Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children's health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, because of fears that it would derail a bigger budget bill. And several current and former lawmakers and staff said Hillary Clinton had no role in helping to write the congressional legislation, which grew out of a similar program approved in Massachusetts in 1996.

DON'T DISCOUNT A CLINTON TICKET'S STRENGTH IN OHIO
(John Fortier, Politico)
Many Ohio Democrats are wondering whether Clinton might be more electable than Obama. Clinton dominated rural and blue-collar districts such as Ohio’s 6th in the March 4 primary. And lunch pail and breadbasket voters are key swing voters, concentrated in the competitive battleground states. The 6th Congressional District gave Clinton, who won 70 percent of the vote, her widest margin of victory of any district in Ohio. The district starts in Northeast Ohio, on the Pennsylvania border in Mahoning County, just south of Youngstown. It continues along the borders of West Virginia and, ultimately, Kentucky, following the banks of the Ohio River. It is about 50 percent rural and 31 percent blue collar, according to The Almanac of American Politics. Clinton won every county easily. Only in Athens County, home of Ohio University, did she fail to break 60 percent. The rural and blue-collar voters of Ohio are likely to be more important swing voters than those Obama courts.

OBAMA WORKS TO CONVERT IN PENNSYLVANIA
(Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico)
In the days after the March 24 voter registration deadline, state election officials will release figures that measure the almost singular focus of Obama’s field operation until then: political conversions.  Obama is attempting to crack open Pennsylvania’s closed party primary, initiating a program to flip the registrations of independent and Republican voters to Democrat.  The Pennsylvania strategy is aimed at giving Obama a head start by expanding the rolls by tens of thousands of voters ahead of the April 22 election. The final tabulations from the Department of State could offer the first tangible indications of whether Obama can catch Clinton in a state where she holds the advantage. 

A FREE-SPIRITED WANDERER WHO SET OBAMA'S PATH
(Janny Scott, New York Times)
Ms. Soetoro, who died of ovarian cancer in 1995, was the parent who raised Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator running for the Democratic presidential nomination. He barely saw his father after the age of 2. Though it is impossible to pinpoint the imprint of a parent on the life of a grown child, people who knew Ms. Soetoro well say they see her influence unmistakably in Mr. Obama. They were close, her friends and his half-sister say, though they spent much of their lives with oceans or continents between them. He would not be where he is today, he has said, had it not been for her. Yet he has also made some different choices — marrying into a tightly knit African-American family rooted in the South Side of Chicago, becoming a churchgoing Christian, publicly recounting his search for his identity as a black man.

HALT THE POLITICAL HARI-KIRI
(James Carville, Financial Times)
In this, the most fascinating and longest-running Democratic primary process of our time, we were presented with a silly moment that unfortunately is all too reflective of modern American culture. Consider the case of one Samantha Power.... To prevent her candidate from further embarrassment, Ms Power performed the ritual act of American political hara-kiri and resigned. The problem is that calls for resignation are becoming cries of “wolf” in US politics today. Every time one campaign’s surrogate says something mildly offensive about the other candidate, resignation calls are swift... This sort of hyper-sensitivity diminishes everyone who engages in it, both the candidates and the media. Politics is a rough and tumble business, and yet there seems to be an effort by the commentariat to sanitise American politics to some type of high-level Victorian debating society.

CLINTON OPENS UP HER HOME TO WOO UNALIGNED LAWMAKERS
(Shailagh Murray and Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post)
Most of the guests were confirmed supporters, many from New York and Arkansas, making it something of a friends-and-family event. But the real mission of the evening was to court lawmakers -- who are also superdelegates in the party's nominating process -- especially those from some of the biggest states... The two-hour event (cocktails, followed by brief remarks from the candidate and a gather-round-the-hearth question session) came as Clinton and Obama returned to Washington for their day jobs in the Senate, where they crossed paths and were also immersed in the pool of superdelegates who work alongside them on Capitol Hill. Clinton's event focused on House members -- a letter sent out afterward said about 60 attended -- and Obama also was reportedly meeting with unaligned members yesterday . After the Clinton reception, Chris Haylor, a campaign official, sent out a memo listing the undecided lawmakers who had attended and asking for help with lobbying them. "We encourage you all to seek them out today and thank them for attending and to get their feedback," he wrote. "We want to make sure we strike while the iron is hot."