Friends say don't expect to see Cindy McCain enter the political arena

From the moment Arizona Sen. John McCain announced last year that he had an aggressive form of brain cancer to the day he died this weekend, Cindy McCain was focused only on his wellbeing and not at all on politics, friends told Politico on Tuesday.

"She spent the last year at John's side as they've gotten through this illness and that's all that she's been focused on," one friend said. While it's not likely that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) will appoint her to fill her late husband's seat, he is expected to look to her for guidance when making the selection. "If the family expressed interest in a particular attribute that McCain's successor would have, my instinct is that [Ducey] would honor that," GOP strategist Chuck Coughlin told Politico.

There are some cases of widows stepping in and taking over for their late husbands, including Democrats Jean Carnahan and Jocelyn Birch Burdick. In 2000, Carnahan's husband, Mel, was running for Senate in Missouri, but was killed in a plane crash shortly before the election; it was too late to take his name off the ballot, and after he won, she was appointed to fill the Senate seat. After Burdick's husband, Sen. Quentin Burdick (N.D.), died in 1992, she was appointed to fill the vacancy until a special election was held, becoming North Dakota's first female senator.

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McCain's friends told Politico she's never thought of herself as a political figure and was often surprised when people wanted to specifically meet her. "It's a mistake to understand the McCains as a political family," one staffer said. "They're a military family first and a political family second."