High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Richard Henry Carmona (born November 22, 1949) is an American physician, public health administrator, and politician. He was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as the seventeenth Surgeon General of the United States. Appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002, Carmona left office at the end of July 2006 upon the expiration of his term. After leaving office, Carmona was highly critical of the Bush administration for interfering with and suppressing scientific findings which conflicted with the Administration`s ideological agenda. In August 2006, Carmona returned home to Tucson, Arizona. In November 2011, he announced he would seek the Democratic Party`s nomination for United States Senate in the hopes of succeeding outgoing Republican Senator Jon Kyl, despite being registered as a political independent.