The Hensley fortune was made with hard work, bootlegging and links to the Arizona mob

When not campaigning, she prefers tooling around Phoenix in her company Lexus, with its "MS BUD" plates, to managing beer sales. Unlike Michelle Obama, she has been reluctant to do events on her own.

John McCain has often been absent at the hardest times of her life.

The couple adopted a Bangladeshi girl named Bridget, who is now 17. Cindy just brought her home and announced to John McCain that they had a new daughter. "John was with me the first time I lost a baby," Cindy McCain told Harper's Bazaar last year, "but not for those after, which was hard."

She says: "I keep a long list, you know. I have a grudge list.