Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.

The rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal.

President George W. Bush said in 2001 that he had looked Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the eye and ``was able to get a sense of his soul.'' Senator John McCain says he looked into Putin's eyes ``and saw three letters: KGB.''

McCain, 71, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, favors expelling Russia from the Group of Eight club of industrial powers. He calls for forging a ``League of Democracies'' to confront Putin and hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev, who takes over tomorrow, on Russian threats against former Soviet republics and rollbacks of domestic freedoms.

The candidate's approach to Russia signals that he has aligned himself with hard-line foreign-policy advisers who favor democracy promotion above all and rejects advocates of doing business with authoritarian regimes when it suits U.S. interests.

McCain's aggressive policy may encounter difficulties because the U.S. needs support from Russia.

Sporting a well-tailored suit and arriving in a chauffeured black car, Bill Clinton is quietly working to win over small-town crowds with a populist message: Don't diss Wal-Mart shoppers.

At one of a dizzying series of appearances this week on his wife's behalf in rural North Carolina, the former president scoffed at an unnamed "snooty" columnist who had poked fun at his wooing of ordinary working folk.

"They think we're dumber than we are," Clinton said from the front porch of a local museum, drawing hoots from the crowd. "I grew up in a place like this. I know people here are as smart as anywhere else. They haven't figured that out yet," Clinton said of the political and media establishment.

Rural towns like Dunn are Hillary Clinton's best hope to wrest the Democratic nomination from Barack Obama, who leads in the delegate count but trails the New York senator among lower-income people. These are the voters who spurred Clinton to victory in Pennsylvania.