Meet Rick Scott Health Care’s Public Enemy Number One

To their critics, Rick Scott and Jeff Greene are poster boys for two of  America's biggest problems: our health care and financial systems. Scott resigned in 1997 as CEO of the world's largest hospital corporation, Columbia/HCA, after the feds brought criminal and civil charges against it for massive Medicare fraud, resulting in a record $1.7 billion in fines and settlements. Greene — whose best man at his 2007 wedding was boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson, and who once had convicted Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss as a housemate — became a billionaire using credit-default swaps to bet against the subprime mortgages that toppled the U.S. housing market.

Given voters' anger at Wall Street greed and general corporate malfeasance, you might think controversial résumés like those might dampen prospects for political careers. But then again, there's always Florida. There, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll, Scott looks set to win the Republican primary for governor on Aug. 24 and Greene is in a statistical tie with Congressman Kendrick Meek in the contest for the Democratic nod for the state's open U.S.

Scott, who like Greene has never held elected office but is spending millions of his own dollars on TV ads, uses the same rhetoric in his race against Florida attorney general and former Congressman Bill McCollum — whom Scott leads by a surprising 13 points. But now that the two are surging in the polls — and in the wake of last week's primaries in California, where multimillionaire ex-CEOs Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina won the GOP nominations for Governor and Senator, respectively — Scott and Greene are highlighting a critical issue in this election cycle: Are they the can-do antipoliticians that our rotted government culture needs, or are they just a troubling reminder that when an angry electorate throws open the door to outsiders, it's too often the ultra-rich who end up walking through it?

Greene, 55, whose personal fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.25 billion, was raised in a working-class family in Massachusetts and Florida. He worked his way through Harvard Business School before striking gold in real estate in California, where he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1980 as a Republican and acquired Tinseltown buddies like Tyson and Fleiss. "I don't condone some of the things Mike Tyson did in his past," says Greene, who acknowledges, "I've been a friend to people who may not have had perfect pasts." But perhaps his more controversial move was shoveling $50 million into credit-default swaps, arcane financial instruments that would pay off handsomely if the U.S. housing bubble burst, as Greene presciently feared it could. When it did, his investment turned into $800 million. (Read "How Florida's Forgotten Democrat Could Win the Senate Race.")

There was nothing illegal about how Greene made his fortune. He concedes explosive Wall Street tools like swaps and derivatives "need to be better regulated," but he argues he was just "protecting my real estate investments and the jobs they create" from "bad home loans Washington had allowed to run wild." Ironically, Greene says that's a big reason he's running: "In so many areas of our security, Washington is failing, and like a lot of people I'm in a panic that it's not getting anything done." But Meek accuses Greene of "betting against middle-class homeowners" and then, just two years after returning to Florida, "trying to buy" its Senate election in "carpetbagger" style. "Voters may be frustrated with Washington," notes Meek campaign manager Abe Dyk, "but they're even more frustrated with Wall Street."

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Nevertheless, Greene, whose positions include support of green technology and "crippling sanctions" against Iran, may be poised for an upset. His barrage of ads, which often include his 83-year-old mother and her fellow Florida "condo commandos," have lifted him in the unemployment-ravaged state to within two points of Meek, 27% to 29% — with a sizable 37% undecided.

Scott, 57, a lawyer and former Navy radarman who made his fortune acquiring hospitals in Texas, was never personally charged in the Columbia/HCA scandal. (Four other company executives were charged; two were convicted, but the convictions were later overturned.) Still, Columbia/HCA admitted to fraud including the falsification of diagnostic codes, giving doctors financial incentives to drum up patients and billing Medicare for bogus lab tests — all while Scott was being lionized (including in TIME) as a cost-cutting health care industry savior. Scott addresses the disgrace in some of his ads, though not exactly in the forthright manner he likes to excoriate "career politicians" for avoiding. "Mistakes were made, and I take responsibility," he says in one spot. "But I've learned from them and moved on." (See pictures of 60 years of election-night drama.)

Voters and the media have so far let Scott (who declined an interview for this article) and Greene "pretty much define themselves with their commercials," says Sean Foreman, a Florida politics expert at Miami's Barry University. "They've gotten a fairly free ride to the top of the polls." Now, however, "these guys are going to be facing more scrutiny," and their "support is likely to level out and maybe even drop." For Scott, who is still in the health care facility business, some of that scrutiny may also fall on his ardent support for offshore oil drilling despite the massive Gulf oil spill, and on his nonprofit organization Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR), which he founded last year. CPR has been widely accused of peddling misinformation about President Obama's health care reform, including claims that patients will no longer be able to choose doctors or health plans.

Still, Foreman notes, Republican and Democratic leaders in Florida "are very nervous" about the Scott-Greene surge — which is also a reflection of how disillusioned voters in the crucial swing state are with both parties. Critics can accuse the multimillionaire Scott — who so far has outspent McCollum $12.5 million to $800,000 — of buying his double-digit poll edge. But the charisma-challenged McCollum isn't helping voters forget the fact that the Florida GOP is mired in a broad embezzlement scandal that this month saw the indictment of the state party's former chairman. (See "Portraits of the Tea Party Movement.")

But both Scott and McCollum lead the likely Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Florida chief financial officer Alex Sink, by as many as 10 points. Florida Democrats, meanwhile, have still not recovered from losing their state dominance to Jeb Bush and the GOP a decade ago. Meek's campaign is hobbled by questions about his ties to a developer who was indicted in a case involving the theft of $1 million in public funds for unfinished projects in Meek's low-income South Florida district (the developer has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial). And even if Meek defeats Greene, the Quinnipiac poll puts him a distant third in the Senate general election, 20 points behind the leader, Florida Governor and Republican turned independent Charlie Crist, and 16 behind the likely Republican nominee, former Florida house speaker Marco Rubio. Greene trails Crist by 26 — a sign, some fear, that he could drive Democratic voters such as women and African Americans to Crist in November.

Florida, inordinately populated by newcomers, has a long history of embracing outsiders, for better or worse. Scott and Greene have so far succeeded in testing the limits of that inclination.

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