By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

PHOENIX - When Senator John Mc- Cain is in Washington, he lives in a luxury high-rise condominium in Arlington, Virginia, owned by his wife, Cindy Hensley McCain. Mrs. McCain also owns their condos in Phoenix, San Diego and Coronado, California, and their vacation compound near Sedona, Arizona. And it is the beer business, Hensley & Company, she inherited from her father that is the source of the McCain family fortune.
That fortune makes Mr. McCain one of the richest members of the Senate. Yet little of it is in his name.
Democrats have increasingly highlighted Mr. McCain’s wealth. Senator Barack Obama ridiculed him recently for being unable to recall how many homes he owned, saying it showed that Mr. McCain was out of touch with ordinary Americans. But 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. Mrs. McCain 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 & Company, who spoke at the McCain campaign’s behest.
But the Hensley family wealth is 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 & Company has grown from a tiny operation in the 1950s to the dominant beer wholesaler in Arizona and the third-largest Budweiser distributor in the United States, with more than $300 million in annual sales.
But by all accounts, Mrs. McCain is far from a forceful presence at the company, where she is chairwoman. She says she oversees the company’s “strategic planning and corporate vision. Yet she almost never shows up in the office, present and former executives say.
Mrs. McCain has not said how she would handle her business if her husband were elected president. The federal government has domain over issues important to the alcohol industry, like excise taxes, marketing to under-age drinkers and beverage labeling.
The death of Mrs. McCain’s father, James W. Hensley, in 2000 left her with full control over his company, though she has seldom intervened, executives say. “She’s never been a day-to-day manager in this business, Mr. Delgado said.
How much Mrs. McCain receives in profits from the privately held company is not a matter of public record. Distributions to other shareholders, who discussed them only anonymously, suggest she receives hundreds of thousands of dollars several times a year. Her shares in Anheuser-Busch are worth at least $2.7 million.
Mrs. McCain has also invested in banks. Valley National Bank, now part of JPMorgan Chase, holds a promissory note of $500,000 to $1 million that Mrs. McCain has been rolling over annually since 2003. And Hensley’s entire debt of $30 million is held by JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Delgado said.
Far more of Mrs. McCain’s money is invested in real estate. Mrs. McCain owns 10 homes, including rental properties.
While all of the family’s real estate is held by Mrs. McCain, the John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation is funded by Mr. McCain. From 2001 to 2006, its donations, to causes including mine clearing and Parkinson’s research as well as to the McCains’ children’s schools, averaged about $260,000 a year.
Today, Hensley & Company is a major donor to Arizona politicians, and has fought increases in the state excise tax, now about 1.5 cents a beer. The tax has not risen since 1984 and remains 16 percent below the national median.
Its contributions have occasionally drawn bad publicity. In 1991, an Anheuser- Busch lobbyist accused Jim Hensley of passing him cash to give to lawmakers. But the lobbyist recanted, and no charges were filed.
At the national level, the company’s priorities include rolling back the national excise tax of about 5 cents a beer, last raised in 1991 . Still, industry critics acknowledge that Mr. McCain has consistently recused himself from alcohol-specific issues. Yet he has received more contributions from the industry than nearly any other senator.
The reason, beer executives say, is that Mr. McCain is sympathetic to business owners and shares their views on taxes and other economic issues.
But George A. Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group that is a frequent opponent of the alcohol lobby, said the industry would benefit if a McCain administration steered clear of alcohol policy to avoid conflicts of interest. Inaction, Mr. Hacker said, is almost always better than action in the industry’s view.