John McCain plans to spend next week reaching out to African-Americans, displaced factory workers and people living in poverty - voters not usually associated with the Republican Party.

Starting Monday, the presumptive GOP nominee for president will stop in Alabama’s “Black Belt,” then move on to the struggling steel town of Youngstown, Ohio, and the Appalachian region of Kentucky. The Arizona senator is also trying to make it to New Orleans, which is still recovering from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

“I want to tell people living there that there must not be any forgotten parts of America, any forgotten Americans,” McCain told newspaper editors this week.

“A lot of moderate white voters want a president who can reach out to the disadvantaged,” said John Pitney, a former House GOP aide and government professor at Claremont McKenna College in California. “So McCain has to show he’s making the effort.”

McCain “is sending the signal that he’s a different kind of Republican,” which he must do to attract independent voters unaligned with either party, Republican pollster Whit Ayres said.

“Independents voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in 2006,” Ayres said, when Republicans lost control of Congress. McCain can win, Ayres said, only if independents vote for him in 2008.

Lee ADDS: John McCain should be applauded for these courageous moves. As a Republican that really cares about the downtrodden and prays for their, enlightenment and uplifting, I see the education offered will allow them to partake in the America dream! Instead of offering ’sweet sounding platitudes’ John McCain is offering them HOPE!