Miami-Dade School Board Member Carlos “Crybaby” Curbelo, who was hand-picked by the GOP 
establishment to pit against Congressman Joe Garcia in November, won by a near mandate 47% of the vote in the five-way District 26 Republican primary Tuesday.
He only with a huge absentee ballot margin in Miami Dade and yet, more people voted against him than for him. While Curbelo got the majority, 13,844 voters, to cast ballots for him. The other four candidates combined got 15,618 votes.
Still, it was a very comfortable 22-point lead over second place finisher, Cutler Bay Mayor Ed “Big Mac Daddy” MacDougall, who got 25% of the vote.
Former Miami-Dade Commissioner Joe Martinez and former Congressman David Rivera, came in next with their disappointing 17% and 8%, respectively. In fact, constitutional attorney Lorenzo “Larry” Palomares Starbuck is the only one who can be proud that he held the 3% he always knew he had.
What happened? That is surely what Martinez and MacDougall are asking themselves today.
Not Rivera. He knows what happened in his case: His heart wasn’t in it. He had one foot in the race and one foot out from the beginning. Maybe because he felt he wouldn’t win. After losing to Garcia last year in the midst of a federal investigation into campaign finance 
violations, just like he was facing this year, he might have second guessed himself. That’s possible. But Rivera really wants to go back to Tallahassee, not Washington. He never really campaigned like he used to.
Not like Mac did. For 18 months. And with half a million of his own money. That has to be a bitter pill to swallow even for an underdog that knew he was facing what everyone warned him was going to be a 90-degree uphill battle as a relatively unknown Anglo. Let’s face facts, though: Anywhere else in the country, Mac would have won. He was by far the best candidate. A campaign consultant’s dream candidate. Just not here.
We’ll have to take a look at demographics tomorrow and how they may have played a part in the most Hispanic district in the country, because Ladra is figuring they did.
But taking a quick browse at the absentee ballots in Miami-Dade tonight show that Curbelo definitely had the edge there. 
Sure, he won in ABs, early voting and on Election Day. But in person voting margins were about 2 to 1 while the absentee margin is more than 3 to 1. Curbelo somehow got 7,618 absentee votes. The next highest number went to Martinez, who got 2,415.
Mac was in third place in Miami-Dade but pulled into second with the Monroe County votes, where he led in ABs about 3 to 1 over Curbelo. In the Keys, Mac got 59% of the vote, while the Crybaby got 26%.
Curbelo’s campaign report doesn’t show a lot of GOTV expenses. But he worked on the 2008 Congressional bid by former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart with Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador in a campaign where the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office found evidence of ballot tampering and AB fraud. They just couldn’t point to one person so no charges were filed.
Well, there’s plenty of time to look into that in the next eight weeks while we press Curbelo to disclose, once and for all, who his clients are at Capitol Gains, the business he put under his wife’s name so he could very legally avoid the required disclosure of any clients that feed him 5% or more of his income.
Republicans probably do not realize it, but they may have just handed the victory in November to Garcia. Because while this is a midterm year in which they could have taken that seat back, they would have needed the right candidate, a good candidate.
And, maybe it’s because he is still too young and impressionable and immature and he hasn’t done squat, but Curbelo doesn’t measure up.
Carlos Curbelo slam dunks GOP primary with massive ABs added by Ladra on
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