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McCain's Wife Controls Family's Fortune

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The New York Times

Published: August 23, 2008

PHOENIX - When Sen. John McCain is in Washington, he lives in a luxury high-rise condominium in Arlington, Va., owned by his wife, Cindy Hensley McCain.
Cindy McCain also owns their condos in Phoenix, San Diego and Coronado, Calif., and their vacation compound near Sedona, Ariz. It is the beer business, Hensley & Co., she inherited from her father that is the source of the McCain family fortune.

That fortune makes John McCain one of the richest members of the Senate. Yet barely a sliver of it is in his name.

Democrats have increasingly highlighted McCain's wealth: Sen. Barack Obama ridiculed him Thursday for being unable to say how many homes he owned, saying it showed that McCain was out of touch with ordinary Americans.

With the McCains' money in Cindy McCain's name, as dictated by a prenuptial agreement, the senator's finances are more difficult to assess and scrutinize than those of many other political candidates.

The husbands and wives of senators are subject to fewer disclosure requirements than their office-holding spouses. In addition, Cindy McCain, who files separate tax returns from her husband, controls a privately held company and invests mainly through a web of limited-liability corporations and trusts that have few disclosure requirements. She declined to be interviewed.

"Cindy is a private person, and I think in many ways that defines her," said Robert Delgado, her father's successor as chief executive of Hensley & Co., who spoke at the McCain campaign's behest.

The Hensley family wealth, from its rough-and-tumble origins to prominence in Arizona's corporate world, is also the fortune that propelled John McCain into national politics. A clearer picture of that fortune emerges from a review of public records and interviews with employees, business associates, friends and relatives.

Hensley & Co. has grown from a tiny operation in the 1950s to the dominant beer wholesaler in Arizona and the third-largest Budweiser distributor in the country, with more than $300 million in annual sales. It plays a leading role in corporate Phoenix - Andy McCain, the senator's adopted stepson from his first marriage and a top executive of the beer company, is now president of the city's Chamber of Commerce - and is a forceful presence in state politics on issues that matter to it.

By all accounts, Cindy McCain is far from a forceful presence at the company, where she is the chairwoman.

She crisscrosses the country on the company jet, keeps an accountant on the company payroll to mind her personal finances, drives a company Lexus with "MS BUD" plates, and says she oversees the company's "strategic planning and corporate vision." Yet she almost never shows up in the office, is deemed an absentee owner by Anheuser-Busch and has left scarcely a mark on the company, present and former executives say.

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