The campaign minefield -- a combination of media scrutiny and voter intrigue -- forced the Republican's gubernatorial campaign to clarify whether Scott thinks President Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen and how a student's race affects school performance.
The distractions slowed the candidate's momentum but only slightly as he sealed votes with handshakes and won rave reviews from many of hundreds at his events.
Scott started his day in Clearwater, where he found an anti-incumbent crowd sipping coffee at the Lenny's restaurant.
Standing under one of the diner's colorful ceiling tiles with the slogan -- ``A restaurant is the only place where people are happy when they are fed up'' -- city councilman Paul Gibson told him voters ``are just voting for the other guy because they are mad.''
Paul and Carol Heister, sitting a few tables away, exemplified the anger. ``How are you going to get those clowns out of Tallahassee,'' Paul Heister said as he shook Scott's hand. ``I'm a Republican and I think they are an embarrassment.''
Scott smiled, and said he would run government like a business. ``We're going to be in the black, we're going to watch every penny,'' he said.
The Heisters said they left solid Scott supporters. ``I'm so glad you're a businessman and not a politician,'' she said. ``I'm so sick of politicians.''
The remark is an obvious dig at Scott's outspent rival Bill McCollum, the Republican attorney general who spent two decades in Congress and has been a consistent name on the ballot.
McCollum has responded with ads that highlight the Medicare and Medicaid fraud that took place in Scott's hospital chain, Columbia/HCA, which pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and paid $1.7 billion in civil and criminal penalties.
Scott has routinely said he did not know about the fraud and stressed that he was never charged with any crimes, but took responsibility for the actions under his watch.
The issue is reverberating in the election. In just about every forum in the last two days of the bus tour, voters ask him to further explain his involvement and knowledge in the fraud.
Steve Cutler, an undecided voter, is a former corporate auditor who contends Scott ``had to have to know something.'' After listening to Scott, he said, ``It's one of the key questions I'm undecided about and it's not a full answer there.''
The Justice Department found that Columbia/HCA committed a variety of frauds on the federal Medicare program, from overbilling for patient care to fraudulently manipulating hospital costs. And some crimes date back to the very first hospital purchases orchestrated by Scott's company in Texas in the late 1980s, court records show.
Scott and his partners started Columbia with the purchase of two hospitals in El Paso, before expanding through Texas and later Florida. According to the Justice Department, Columbia illegally offered financial benefits to El Paso doctors in exchange for their patient referrals, a violation of anti-kickback statutes barring such transactions to prevent financial incentives for unnecessary medical treatment.
As part of its business model, Columbia offered doctors ownership shares in its hospitals. But according to the Justice Department, the number of shares given to doctors depended on how many patient referrals they brought in. In a lawsuit filed in Washington in 2001, government lawyers said Scott knew of this arrangement and even paid money to some doctors as part of the scheme, court records show.
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