Political Pics of the Week: Election Day, Israel, Germany

Our returned weekly feature is heavy today with political photos from the field on the Super Bowl for politicians and political beings alike: Election Day.

Blessed with some beautiful weather, thousands of people voted on Tuesday, adding to absentee ballots and early voters that cast a total of 529,867 ballots — which is a whopping 40 percent, just under the 41 percent who participated in the last midterm election in 2010.

Republican lobbyist Daniel Diaz-Leyva was looking optimistic early on, enjoying super Tuesday weather in Key Biscayne. He later lost his bid to unseat Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez (D-Little Havana) by 600 votes. Six hundred expensive votes, since he spent more than half a mil on the bid.

Congressman Joe Garcia (when do we start calling them former?) tweeted this photo from one of the voting places, boasting that young people vote for him to keep college tuition low. Not enough young people, it seems. He later lost the District 26 race against Carlos “Crybaby” Curbelo.

And like he had a contest on twitter, too, Curbelo — who beat Garcia with an almost 5,000 vote, 3-point lead — tweeted his own “young voter” pic with , an 18-year old voter an hour before polls closed, and with Keith Fernandez, counsel to Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. He may have changed into a suit and tie, but his head with that crocodile smile is almost like it was superimposed from the last picture. Eerie.

Former Congressman David “Nine Lives” Rivera wasn’t even on the ballot in what was once Rivera Country, but he can’t stay away from polls on Election Day. It’s like a habit already. So he went but not because he was on the ballot. Rivera was at precincts in his old district Tuesday collecting petition signatures to get on the state House ballot for 2016.

Clifford the Dog stopped for a photo op with Palmetto Bay Mayor Shelley Stanczyk at St. Richard’s Catholic Church. She’s in a runoff against former Mayor Eugene Flinn. Hmmmm, a runoff. What a concept. Maybe they ought to have a majority rule in something like the guv’s race, too. Just maybe.

State Rep. Eddy “Here Comes Hialeah” Gonzalez, soon to be former State Rep. “There Goes Hialeah” as he is termed out, may have lost his bid to become Miami-Dade Property Appraiser last week, but he celebrated his 45th birthday with family members and friends Sunday.

Even though Miami Beach Mayor Philip “Fix It” Levine wasn’t on the ballot this year, he seemed more busy than anyone. Levine gave the State of the City address Thursday, touching upon everything from flooding to transportation, and then jetted off to Israel where he hung out with some IDF soldiers at the Western Wall and presented Isreaeli Minister of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Yuvai Steinitz with a commemorative coin. Levine makes sure to note on the photos that all travel expenses are being paid by him and not by taxpayers.

Back home on Sunday, several local politicos went to the Miami-Dade College Wolfson Campus to witness the unveiling of a piece of the Berlin Wall on the 25th anniversary of its fall. Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado spoke. And State Rep. Jose Felix “Selfie King” Diaz got a photo with Jürgen Hardt, Germany’s Coordinator of Transatlantic Cooperation… but why did he cut out Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart? Because, you know, the Selfie King has to know that there was room to keep the congressman’s whole face in the pic, if he had moved the Instagram box a little to the left.