McCain skewers pork for press

CORNVILLE, Ariz. — Sen. John McCain works the grill, talking nonstop as he twirls a pair of tongs, flips a dozen racks of baby back ribs (“always cook them bone down”), sprinkles on endless dustings of Hog’s Breath seasoning and soaks the sizzling meat with fresh-squeezed lemon juice (“it’s the key to great ribs”).

And like most men, he loves to talk while grilling — about grilling.

“You know where you get the best baby back ribs? Costco. Seriously. The best,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said as he entertained a band of reporters over the weekend at his valley ranch in the Red Rocks southwest of Sedona.

He also cherishes talking about his home, which features a doormat that says “GEEZER (formerly known as ‘Stud Muffin’) Lives Here.”

“The thing I love most about this place is having people over — mainly to make them listen to the music I like,” he said with a laugh, shortly after Michael Murphey’s 1975 hit “Wildfire” piped onto the wooden deck.

While the Democratic presidential contenders are notoriously elusive with the gaggle of reporters following their campaigns, Mr. McCain spent Sunday afternoon literally hand-feeding the press — pork, no less, an odd twist for a senator bent on ending pork-barrel spending.

“Wait, that one’s not quite done, gimme that back,” he said to a reporter to whom he’d just doled out a hot rib, cut with the aid of his longtime friend Sen. Lindsey Graham. “Here, take this one, this one’s good. Wait ‘til you taste this, mmm, man.”

On the cusp of securing the magic 1,191 delegates with wins today in the Texas and Ohio primaries, the 71-year-old senator decided to take the weekend off and recharge at the Hidden Valley ranch he bought in 1984 with his wife, Cindy, who also hosted the barbecue.

Clad in jeans, running shoes, a white sweatshirt emblazoned with a picture of his family, a ball cap from Maine and a pair of mirror sunglasses, Mr. McCain worked not one but two four-burner gas grills, and never stopped moving for three hours.

Like President Bush, who once a summer invites to his Prairie Chapel Ranch the journalists who follow him daily, Mr. McCain took the press on a tour of the homestead that could become the Western White House.

And like the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mr. McCain’s is modest, understated, with a few outbuildings, a rustic cabinlike house in a hard-to-reach valley, settled in the 1800s by Mormons.

Heading down into a lowland by the raging Oak Creek — past a tiny yard sign that said, “Life Began in a Garden,” into a spot with lights on the trees that he said looks like an “Iranian bazaar” — Mr. McCain waxed poetic about his home away from Washington.

“It’s the most beautiful place on Earth: You can hike, swim in the creek — the stars are beautiful,” he said.

Pointing to a massive leafless tree with a huge nest in the high branches, he said: “There’s a very big black hawk that lives there, that comes every year, and they almost always have a baby. And if you’re really fortunate — I was one time — you can watch the mother teach the baby to fly. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Like Mr. Bush at his ranch, Mr. McCain works here. Over the weekend, he had a slew of guests, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a front-runner for the vice-presidential slot, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, former Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi and former Rep. Tim Roemer of Indiana.

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