Former Congressman Joe Garcia is out of politics — at least for now.
Garcia has seemed to kick his habit — running for office — and gone for the private sector. He is now senior vice president of QueensFort Capital, a Miami Beach-based 
merchant and investment bank where he apparently will use his experience and the contacts he gained vís-a-vís U.S. immigration policy to sell those investor EB-5 U.S. visas that go for a minimum $500,000, but usually upwards of $1 million.
He told the Miami Herald he will not work on Cuba business (let’s see how long that lasts) and that he was not going to return to his previous job of constant candidate.
“I am not running for any public office,” he was quoted as saying.
The Herald’s political reporter, Patty Mazzei, apparently asked him if he was running countywide against Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, as some malas lenguas have rumored. But his answer seemed to indicate he wouldn’t run for his old congressional seat, either. Key word: Any.
Does that mean that he knows something we don’t know? Has he and the Democratic Party realized he couldn’t possibly win — after losing to 
Republican Carlos Curbelo while under a cloud of investigations into absentee ballot fraud and ringer candidates — and decided to go with a fresher face?
Read related story: Dear Carlos Curbelo: You have two years; then, bye bye
Can we go fresher than Annette Taddeo, the former chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party and a three-time ballot loser who is apparently the buzz for the highly-contested and flippable seat and has been called the most likely Dem frontrunner in a 2016 challenge Curbelo.
But just because someone saw her in D.C. recently doesn’t mean she was invited. She could have flown up on her own dime and met with these folks to be debriefed on the bungled Florida governor’s race, which Taddeo and former Gov. Charlie Crist, by all rights, should have won.
The problem is that the blue bench in Miami-Dade is really shallow. Which is ridiculous since a majority of voters are registered Democrat. We can count on one hand the people who might be viable candidates, but it almost has to be a Hispanic woman.
Which might just be the only thing Taddeo’s got going for her. 
Ladra can’t quite put her paw on it, but there’s obviously a reason — or two or three — why this woman can’t get elected. And if she runs again, it’s gonna look like she’s desperate for any public office.
Which leaves us with two or three viable options.
Ladra has spoken to former State Rep. Ana Rivas-Logan, a school teacher and former Miami-Dade School Board member who has represented large chunks of that district, if she would step in. But, while Rivas-Logan has raised her profile with some Spanish-language TV pundit time, she is being coy with me. More likely, she won’t challenge her buddy Annette, who sort of ushered her into the Democratic party. Rivas-Logan was once a Republican, which is one of the things that make her perfect for this bell weather district that Crist and Taddeo won with 52% of the vote. Which goes to show that Jeff Garcia‘s absentee ballot sentence sunk Garcia from the get go.
Another real challenger would be former State Rep. Annie Betancourt, a public school administrator who is past president and still a director of the Florida League of Women Voters and has been active on the redistricting legal challenge that has yet to be decided by the Florida Supreme Court. She’s still got some spunk at 70.
Another name that has been batted around is that of Maria Garza, a Homestead activist who has worked for decades to improve conditions for migrant farm workers and is now a Miami-Dade County projects administrator at the Department of Human Services Adult Skills Center in Homestead. Talk about fresh. And maybe this community has matured enough to elect a Mexican-American.
Or maybe voters don’t have to know.
Read related story: Freshman Carlos Curbelo is on a roll — or is it a spin?
What we do know is that somebody better make up their mind fast. Because Curbelo — who is already fundraising for re-election — has been really working the D.C. gig, walking the fine middle line on immigration and even getting a shot at delivering the GOP response in Spanish to the State of the Union address, where he gets points for making his own edits into someone else’s translated speech. He has been appointed to the Transportation and Infrastructure and Education and Workforce subcommittees and this month announced he was appointed chairman of the Agriculture, Energy and Trade Subcommittee on the Small Business Committee.
Curbelo is getting a lot of opportunity and a lot of media attention for a freshman who is arguably a one-termer.
The longer there is not a defined candidate already running against him, the longer he has this platform all to himself.
Joe Garcia goes private, leaves FL26 to fresher meat added by Ladra on
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