Our only relief is that he’ll be a one-term congressman.
Carlos “Crubaby” Curbelo‘s predictable defeat of Congressman Joe Garcia Tuesday night in one of the ugliest and most expensive campaigns in 
Florida history is not the huge accomplishment that he’s going to boast it is. After all, the numbers were there for whoever went against Garcia in a midterm year when Republican turnout is higher. Ask anybody who was involved in the campaigns.
He came into Election Day with a 7,000 vote lead — more Republicans than Democrats casting absentee and early ballots in the district — meaning Garcia had to get 80 percent of the independents or so. And Garcia’s tainted image — the campaign investigations, the ear wax, the cozying up to the Cuban regime — couldn’t swing it, only making up 2,000 or so.
In the end, it was enough to give Curbelo the win, 51.5% to 48.5% — that three points that the most recent poll suggested.
But do not be fooled. This is no feather in Curbelo’s cap. This was more of a vote against Garcia and for anybody else than it was a vote for Crybaby.
Curbelo, however, is used to caps without feathers.
A pretty lame Miami-Dade School Board member who has done nada much in four years, Curbelo is actually a professional lobbyist — not the “education innovator” that Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen claims he is — who hides his client list by putting his firm under his wife’s name. This allows him to, um, skirt disclosure laws.
And he’s really just a lap dog to former Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his baby brother, 
who inherited the throne, Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart. He cut his political teeth on their campaigns and owes them his entire public being. That’s why he tried, against the wishes of parents and the neighborhood, to get a school named for the DBs. Congressman Diaz-Balart is grateful anyway — he went and stood with Curbelo at the Lakes of the Meadow polling location Tuesday.
Here is a guy whose proudest achievement in four years at the school board is legislation that kept Lacrosse as a sport — really for Colombus High, because they piggy back onto the county’s certification, and it was going to be cut because it was not very popular (it took others to make sure that there was a push to drive up interest at public schools).
He also helped expand the use of charter schools in Miami-Dade and tried, but failed, to privatize school transportation.
Oh, and more recently, he also “forgot” to report almost $100,000 of contributions from 40 different special interest groups in his last campaign report. How convenient. See? Curbelo — who even beat up on his own GOP mate, former Congressman David Rivera — is all about being politically convenient.
And he has the gall to do all this while running as the guy in the white hat.
Ladra hasn’t even gotten to the part about how he tried to smear me with wild allegations of extortion, no less, which he knows were outright lies. He 
also lied when he told Jim DeFede that the question about his client list was driven by Joe Garcia’s campaign. That loophole he conveniently uses was exposed here, on Political Cortadito, and Ladra did not get the information from Joe Garcia’s campaign. She found it herself online. If you all remember, it became an issue during the primary.
But I’m not bitter. In fact, I’m sorta excited. See? Now I get to find a candidate to help run against Curbelo in 2016, which is not a Republican midterm year and could easily swing the seat back the blue way. And he won’t have a hard school board seat then to land on.
In the meantime, I am not going away. Ladra will have to start covering our congress members more closely. Because if his history and track record are any indication, Curbelo isn’t going to earn any feathers here either.
And this not going away, Carlitos.
You still have to answer for the four years you hid your client list under your wife’s name. You will still be dogged by questions about clients like the Ecuadoran embezzlers you got meetings for in DC. You will still be as ineffective in Congress as you were on the School Board.
And you only got two years to make your mark. Because in 2016, you’re gone, bro.
Dear Carlos Curbelo: You have two years, then bye-bye added by Ladra on
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