Wil Cardon contributed to the Flake campaign, and has had it with politicians at the hill. So far I think I like Wil Cardon much better than Jeff Flake because as Wil states….Jeff Flake voted against bipartisanship. Thumbs up to Wil Cardon on that! We are tired of Tea Party Republicans who toe the party line instead of doing what is in the best interest of the American people.

Politico reported that prominent Democrats up to and including President Obama had called Carmona to encourage him to run. Arizona is a seat the party hopes to put into play in 2012 as they defend a narrow 53-47 majority in the Senate.

Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona is looking at a straight shot at the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate thanks to the withdrawal Wednesday of chief primary opponent Don Bivens.
The development allows Carmona to focus all of his time, money and energy on his general-election campaign and avoid burning his resources in a potentially costly and divisive primary fight.
<<snipped>>
The GOP race, meanwhile, is increasingly looking like it could turn into a nasty fight between U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., the front-runner, and Wil Cardon, an independently wealthy investor who recently launched an expensive advertising push to boost his name ID.
A big-money, negative GOP grudge match would increase the likelihood that the eventual Republican nominee will be damaged before the general election, a scenario that would further boost Carmona's prospects.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... -race.html

Polling shows [Congressman Jeff] Flake almost 50 points ahead of Cardon, a former Flake supporter, in the Republican primary.

There are still reasons to think this race could shift back in Flake's favor. The 12% of voters who are undecided prefer Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for President by a 58/37 margin, so there's reason to think they might end up breaking toward Flake in the end.
<snipped>
One thing there's zero doubt about: who would have thought two months ago Democratic prospects in the Arizona Senate race would be better than Republican ones in the Missouri contest?

Arizona may go Democratic in the Presidential race sometime but it doesn't appear likely to be this year. We find Mitt Romney leading Barack Obama 53-44 in the state. This is a rare state where a majority of voters actually see Romney favorably. 54% have a positive opinion of him to 42% with a negative one. And Obama's quite unpopular with just 40% of voters approving of him to 57% who disapprove.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main ... izona.html

–U.S Senate (open seat)
Richard Carmona (D) 287737

Wil Cardon (R) 109646
Jeff Flake (R) 355573
Bryan Hackbarth (R) 19070
Clair Van Steenwyk (R) 28949
http://tucsoncitizen.com/community/2012 ... ted-races/

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.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087 ... lenews_wsj

Carmona's main issue here is simply name recognition. He may have been Surgeon General, but who cares about Surgeon Generals? Flake is a very well-respected Congressman who centrist Democrats like myself even admire. But Carmona fits the profile perfectly of the kind of Democrat Arizonans like to elect. Expect these poll numbers to change with time, especially now that Bivens has dropped out.

Not exactly over yet. Even though Carmona conceded on the 6th with the outstanding provisional ballots now being counted Carmona is gaining votes. The deficit went from 6% to 4% and there are still more than 300,000 left to count.

http://www.voxxi.com/richard-carmona-arizona-ballot/

I thought he took back his concession. Has there been an analysis on where the uncounted votes are coming from and what the political leanings of those areas. Rachel said there's a deadline for an official report coming up and at the rate they are counting they are not going to be any where near finished by then. Arizona is worse that Florida this time.!

for Carmona to come out on top.

The uncounted votes are from Maricopa County, one of the largest counties in America (so it's hard to generalize). Phoenix is a Democratic stronghold, so if that's the source of the hold-ups, it plays in Carmona's favor. But the eastern suburbs are conservative.