Friday, June 22, 2012
Democrat Richard Carmona's campaign team is touting a new poll that shows the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate just 2 percentage points behind Congressman Jeff Flake, the GOP frontrunner. The Public Policy Polling survey showed that 43 percent of voters were supporting Flake, 41 percent were supporting Carmona and 16 percent were undecided. The Range talked with Carmona earlier this week; we'll present our Q&A with him in several parts over the next few days. Here's the first installment.
Did you see that going on in Washington when you were working as surgeon general in the Bush White House?
I would say that it was not as vitriolic and hyper-partisan as it is today, but there were times that I scratched my head and worried about both sides of the aisle. I’m not blaming either, I’m just saying, "Guys, you have to come together and we need to solve some problems." Being surgeon general is unique because you work routinely with both sides of the aisle. The issues of the health, safety and security of the nation aren’t Democrat or Republican—they’re American. And we have to figure out how to solve the problems. Even though each side of the aisle may have a different view on how these problems can be solved, the challenge is, "Let’s see if we can coalesce around these ideas and come out with something that’s a hybrid that makes sense for the greater good of the nation and the community that we’re dealing with." As we all know, generally in a democracy, no one person gets everything. You get some of what you need, but we satisfy the needs of the greater good.
After you left the Bush White House, you ended up testifying in front of Congress about some of the frustrations you experienced.
Let me point out first that this was not a voluntary thing. I was asked by Congress to please come forward and testify. I said I would be happy to, but let me suggest to you that when you send a subpoena or the request to testify, get Surgeon General (C. Everett) Koop, get Surgeon General (David) Satcher as well. And ask us all the same questions because I don’t want this to be a partisan hearing. The challenge really is that each surgeon general is an embattled position. And each side of the aisle tries to pull you left and right to basically support their thesis, whatever they happen to be. … The theme, really, that we tried to present to Congress was that it’s much too partisan now. … You are trying to politicize science and some of the issues that we deal with regarding the health, safety and security of the nation. Our testimony was to hopefully to empower Congress to take steps to take the surgeon general out of the crosshairs of politics and make it independent …. Not only that, but you should mandate that the surgeon general give a State of the Nation and Global Health every year to Congress and to the world so that the public can now hold its elected officials accountable as to what they are or are not doing based on what the scientific input was from the doctor of the nation. That doesn’t mean you have to do all of them—I don’t set policy. But the surgeon general informs us.
Next: Carmona on women's health and abortion.
Tags: Richard Carmona , Arizona news , Tucson news , Arizona elections 2012 , Jeff Flake , Wil Cardon. Arizona Senate race