Richard Carmona’s covert campaign to seize GOP Senate seat

10/8/12 6:01 PM EDT

TEMPE, Ariz. — At a gritty American Legion post, Army Special Forces veteran Richard Carmona confides to a room full of voters that he’s been running a “covert operation” this year: his campaign for U.S. Senate.

Indeed, the Arizona Democrat, who served as George W. Bush’s surgeon general, has come out of nowhere to contend for a seat that was practically etched in the GOP column.

Polls show him in a dead heat against Rep. Jeff Flake, a tea party-backed Republican best known for his crusade against pork-barrel spending in Congress, and millions of dollars in outside money is suddenly flooding into the race. As recently as the spring, President Barack Obama’s campaign talked about this being the year Obama could capitalize on the surge in Hispanic voter registration and flip a state as red as a Sedona sunset. Arizona has seen 160,000 new Hispanics, who lean Democratic, added to its voter rolls since 2008. But Obama never made a play.

Now Carmona, the Spanish-speaking son of Puerto Rican immigrants, is in contention to do what Obama could not in two election cycles.

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