WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Tamara Audi
October 11, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443493304578036320829909676.html?KEYWORDS=immigration
Rich Carmona, a self-described "apolitical" former U.S. surgeon general, is giving the Democratic Party a stronger than expected chance to win a Senate race in Arizona for the first time since gasoline cost less than 90 cents a gallon, "The Cosby Show" was television's most popular program and stirrup pants were in.
No Democrat has won a Senate race in such a reliably conservative state since 1988, and Republicans say they are confident their Senate candidate, U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, will prevail. But the race is drawing money and resources since various recent public polls have shown Dr. Carmona just a few points behind—or ahead of—Mr. Flake, after the Republican had double-digit leads over the summer.
At the pair's first debate Wednesday night, Mr. Flake tried to portray Dr. Carmona as liberal Democrat close to President Barack Obama, while Dr. Carmona sought to cast Mr. Flake as a Washington insider.
Outside political trackers have declared the race a tossup. "All of a sudden, this is a real race," said Chuck Coughlin, who heads a Phoenix-based Republican political consulting firm.
Republican reinforcements are now flowing into Arizona to bolster Mr. Flake in the contest to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Jon Kyl. The conservative Club for Growth is spending $500,000 on television ads to support the Republican. FreedomWorks for America, a tea-party-backed political-action committee that usually operates in swing states, opened an office to back Mr. Flake and recently activated volunteers across the state.
And the National Republican Senatorial Committee made a "substantial ad buy" to support Mr. Flake, according to an NRSC official. The ads were scheduled to run in the Phoenix market through Thursday.
National Republicans said they are spending money in Arizona to counter big money being spent on Dr. Carmona by national Democratic groups. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee planned to spend $526,000 on ads supporting Dr. Carmona, according to a person who tracks campaign spending.
Mr. Flake, 49 years old, is a six-term congressman from the Phoenix suburb of Mesa with a reputation for battling earmarks, including voting against spending bills that would have benefited his district.
Mr. Flake is staking his campaign on fighting "regulatory overreach" that he says prevents economic growth in Arizona, and "bringing order" to the budget process in Washington to lower the deficit and establish a stable tax rate for businesses. He has gotten vocal support from Mr. Kyl and Sen. John McCain.
Mr. Flake descends from Mormon pioneers who in 1878 founded Snowflake, a small town in northeastern Arizona named after the Snow and Flake families. Before Mr. Flake was elected to the House in 2000, he headed the Goldwater Institute think tank.
Dr. Carmona, 62, has a rags-to-riches story that took him from an occasionally homeless childhood in New York City to an appointment as surgeon general under George W. Bush. Along the way, he served as a combat medic in Vietnam, a surgeon and a sheriff's deputy in Arizona. Some Arizonans remember the image of Dr. Carmona dangling from the end of a rope attached to a helicopter as he pulled a helicopter crash survivor to safety in 1992.
Dr. Carmona, who was a registered Independent when he was tapped by Mr. Bush, says he is still "apolitical and an independent." He said he wouldn't vote to repeal Mr. Obama's health-care law but would advocate for changes to it to make it more financially sustainable. He supports a fence along the southern border with Mexico, but "as part of a layered approach" to the immigration issue. He says Arizona's recently enacted immigration law "didn't solve a problem" since law-enforcement officials already had the ability to alert federal officials if they apprehended an illegal immigrant.
Republicans—including Gov. Jan Brewer, before she took office—had tried to recruit Dr. Carmona to run for governor or for Congress as a Republican. He said he decided to run for this seat as a Democrat because he was turned off by what he called "extremist, vitriolic" rhetoric of the Republican Party.
"It's not a perfect fit with the Democratic Party either, but it's a better fit," he said.
The Flake campaign has dubbed Dr. Carmona "Rubber Stamp Rich" and seeks to tie him to Mr. Obama, who encouraged Dr. Carmona to run. "There's this philosophy that all jobs have to be created by the government. That's why Dr. Carmona is comfortable in the Democratic party," Mr. Flake said in the debate Wednesday.
Dr. Carmona objects to that characterization. "I'm not running as a senator to defend President Obama," he said, adding that he only met Mr. Obama in person once about eight years ago. Dr. Carmona called Mr. Flake a "chronic politician" during the debate; Mr. Flake accused Dr. Carmona of addressing issues with "happy talk bromides."
Mr. Flake will have to overcome Dr. Carmona's "fairly compelling narrative," as well as his appeal to Latino voters as the son of Puerto Rican parents, said Mr. Coughlin, the GOP consultant.
"He embodies the character of my father," Joanne Goldwater, the daughter of the late Arizona conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater, said at a recent fundraiser for Dr. Carmona. Mr. Goldwater's son, Barry Goldwater Jr., supports Mr. Flake, the Flake campaign says.
Dr. Carmona is benefiting from an expensive, brutal Republican primary during which Mr. Flake "took a beating" from his main opponent, Wil Cardon, who filled the airwaves with negative ads, said Russ Walker, national political director for FreedomWorks for America.
Still, beating a Republican is no easy task in Arizona, where Democrats have lost every Senate race handily since Dennis DeConcini's 1988 win.
Whoever wins, the election could set the political tone in Arizona for quite a while. Once Arizonans elect a senator, they tend to stick with him. In the state's 100 years, it has only had 10 senators—the longest-serving, Carl Hayden, a Democrat, was in office for 42 years.
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