Failed senatorial candidate Richard Carmona is considering a 2014 gubernatorial run. Carmona lost to Congressman Jeff Flake in the race to replace retiring Senator Jon Kyl.
According to the Arizona Republic, a Carmona spokesperson confirmed rumors that Carmona is “looking at all his options.”
Carmon faced sharp criticism for his treatment of female co-workers and his failings as an administrator at Kino Hospital.
During the senatorial campaign Carmona went on the attack of Dr. Cristina Beato, who served as Acting Assistant Secretary of Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2003 to 2005, for her personal account of his abusive behavior. Dr. Beato recounted a night that Dr. Carmona angrily banged on her door in the middle of the night in a rage to continue an argument that he started earlier that day. Carmona’s surrogates went forth to smear Beato, and Carmona released his own ad defending himself against the allegations while demanding that Republican Congressman Jeff Flake pull his commercial from the airwaves.
Late in the campaign, Carmona released a false ad claiming that both senators McCain and Kyl supported him in the senatorial race. The two senators then released a statement calling Carmona’s ad “deeply dishonest.” The Arizona Senators said in a statement, “It is shameful for Richard Carmona to try to deceive the voters in this way.”
Female opponents cited his ‘bullying’ of a nurse who said he failed to diagnose a young boy’s skull fracture in 1991.”
After she complained to other hospital workers about Carmona’s failure to diagnose, Carmona demanded that she resign. The nurse struck a deal with Carmona, for a demotion in order to not be reported to the State Nursing board. Carmona reported her anyway.
A petition was circulated that noted that in 1999 Health Commissioner Sylvia Campoy was antagonized and threatened by Carmona. She was doing her job by reporting another doctor’s drug abuse that Carmona supposedly “dealt with.” Carmona became irate that she reported him. Campoy said “I was screamed at, I was yelled at. I was told it was none of my business. I was told that I had breached peer review.”
Also in 1999, an article in the Arizona Daily Star detailed Carmon’s failure while chief executive of the Pima Health Care System. The article called for Carmona’s resignation, due to his “weak leadership.”
The Star Editorial Board found “Carmona needs to go because Kino Hospital and the whole health system need radical change. Hemorrhaging taxmoney, paralyzed by conflict, the system has for the four years Carmona led it drifted further and further into crisis. To be sure, many of the system’s troubles predate Carmona….. the Carmona years have been disastrous years characterized by drift and squabbling the CEO never transcended. The ugly numbers of the county budget crisis alone implicate Carmona because they show the health system ran up at least $42 million in budget deficits – including $14 million in the last year – on his watch.”
The Editorial Board noted Carmona’s “irresponsible refusal to cut staff and costs during a fiscal crisis. So, too, did last week’s revelation that the health system last year may have added 200 or more employees in a year when it was already perhaps $30 million in the red and experiencing massive patient declines caused by a state cap on its indigent clients. The bottom line: Carmona’s record as a fiscal manager demands his ouster.”
According to the Star, “There have been a series of personnel problems on his watch. Billing problems have only belatedly been addressed. Doctors’ contracts have not been renegotiated to reflect declining caseloads. At the same time, managerial effectiveness has been lost because Carmona spends too much time involved in non-county activities, such as service on the state Board of Medical Examiners and consulting with the University of Arizona. And then there has been Carmona’s uncooperative, even truculent, relationship with the Pima Health Care System Commission of citizens with which the Board of Supervisors two years ago required him to work in formulating policy. Carmona may not like the commission’s oversight. He may believe it should not exist. But he owes it to the community to collaborate with its commission in good faith.”
With Carmona’s unfavorable image with women, current Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, would love to face Carmona in 2014. Brewer, who is hoping lawyers find a legal path to hold a third term is gubernatorial term, is rumored to have friends who are pushing a Carmona so that she doesn’t have to face Felecia Rotellini, a former failed democrat attorney-general candidate.