Bryan Ávila: A Deep Dive Into the Record Behind Byron Donalds’ Running Mate

Byron Donalds named State Senator Bryan Ávila his running mate at Miami’s Freedom Tower. I first saw Ávila’s name attached to a Facebook post about a data-center bill. I did not know him. So I went looking—not at the introduction written for him onstage, but at the bills he sponsored, the votes he cast, the groups that supported him, the industries that funded him and the controversies that followed him.

This is what the record actually shows.

Who is Bryan Ávila?

Bryan Ávila is 42. He was born and raised in Hialeah and now lives in Miami Springs. His parents fled communist Cuba. He is married and has two children.

Ávila earned an associate degree from Miami Dade College, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami and graduate degrees from Florida International University. He is dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Doral College and a captain in the Florida Army National Guard.

He was elected to the Florida House in 2014 and served there for eight years, eventually becoming Speaker Pro Tempore after previously serving as Majority Deputy Whip. He entered the Florida Senate in 2022 and became chairman of the Finance and Tax Committee.

That résumé matters because Ávila is not an outsider arriving to break down Tallahassee’s doors. He has spent twelve years inside Florida’s Republican majority. He knows the legislative machinery because he has been part of it.

Cuba, communism and whether the story is real

At the Freedom Tower, Ávila spoke about his parents leaving Cuba and the lesson he took from it: government control destroys freedom and opportunity. In his telling, their exile is not background decoration. It is the central reason he entered public service.

During the 2021 demonstrations in Cuba, Ávila publicly supported Cubans confronting what he called “decades of tyranny, repression, misery and countless human rights violations under the communist Castro regime.” He used #VivaCubaLibre and #SOSCuba, stood with Governor Ron DeSantis and members of the exile community, and posted in Spanish: “¡Estamos con el pueblo cubano! ¡Abajo la dictadura!”

His legislative work follows the same line. He supported expanded instruction about communist regimes and their victims. He backed restrictions on relationships between Florida colleges and institutions connected to foreign countries of concern, including Cuba and China. He filed a Senate memorial condemning the partnership between the Chinese Communist Party and Cuba’s communist regime, including reports of Chinese espionage and military capabilities on the island.

On communism, the pattern is consistent. It predates today’s announcement by years.

Immigration: is he open borders?

No. The legislative record does not support calling Bryan Ávila an open-borders Republican.

The clearest evidence is his vote for SB 1718 in 2023. That law expanded E-Verify requirements, established penalties involving employers that knowingly hire unauthorized workers, rejected certain out-of-state licenses issued exclusively to undocumented immigrants, prohibited local governments from funding identification cards for people who cannot prove lawful presence and strengthened cooperation with federal immigration authorities. It also increased penalties involving the knowing transportation into Florida of people who entered the country unlawfully.

Ávila’s name appears as a yes vote on the official Senate roll call.

Because immigration is primarily federal, his state record cannot answer every question. I did not find a detailed Ávila platform addressing asylum standards, national visa levels, DACA, mass deportation or a federal pathway to legal status. But on the question that can be answered from his actual votes, the direction is clear: enforcement, E-Verify, cooperation with federal authorities and consequences for illegal immigration. That is not an open-borders record.

The Second Amendment: strong, but not spotless

This is one of the most important parts of the record, and it requires more than repeating an NRA endorsement.

Ávila opposed an effort to bring an assault-weapons ban forward after the Parkland shooting. In 2023, he voted for HB 543, allowing eligible Floridians to carry a concealed firearm without first obtaining a state concealed-weapons license. The NRA has supported him.

But Ávila also voted yes on the final Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in 2018.

That package funded school hardening, mental-health services, additional school-security measures and the guardian program. It also created Florida’s risk-protection-order system, commonly called the red-flag law; raised the minimum age for purchasing a firearm from 18 to 21; extended waiting-period requirements; and banned bump stocks.

Those provisions were not separate from the bill Ávila supported. They were in the final package, and the official House roll call lists him as a yes.

His later vote for permitless concealed carry establishes a substantial pro-gun record. His opposition to advancing an assault-weapons ban matters too. But a voter who treats red-flag laws, age restrictions or waiting periods as disqualifying cannot honestly call his record perfect. Ávila supported all of them in the combined 2018 bill.

The fair description is this: generally pro–Second Amendment, supported by gun-rights groups and willing to expand carry rights, but not a Second Amendment absolutist.

Abortion

Ávila’s legislative record is firmly pro-life.

As a House member, he voted for Florida’s 15-week abortion limit in 2022. After joining the Senate, he voted for the six-week Heartbeat Protection Act in 2023.

The six-week law includes exceptions allowing abortions through 15 weeks when a pregnancy results from rape, incest or human trafficking, subject to documentation requirements. It also contains exceptions involving fatal fetal abnormalities and circumstances in which termination is necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life or avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment.

Ávila also supported parental-consent requirements for minors seeking abortions.

His position is therefore not difficult to locate: he has repeatedly voted to restrict abortion, supported moving Florida from 15 weeks to six weeks and accepted the exceptions written into the current law.

Education

Ávila’s education record sits firmly inside Florida’s conservative parental-rights movement.

He sponsored the House version of the Individual Freedom Act, better known as the Stop WOKE Act. He defended it as protection against forcing students or employees to accept prescribed ideas about race, sex and collective guilt.

He also co-sponsored the Parental Rights in Education Act. That law strengthened parental access to student information, restricted schools from withholding specified information about a child’s well-being and limited classroom instruction concerning sexual orientation and gender identity in the early grades, subject to later changes in state standards and law.

Ávila co-sponsored Florida’s 2021 civic-education law as well. It required an integrated K–12 civics curriculum, instruction about America’s founding principles and oral histories from people who experienced political systems opposed to freedom and democracy. That law passed unanimously.

His record also aligns with school choice and scholarship expansion. The overall philosophy is clear: parents before institutions, civic knowledge, opposition to ideological instruction, and public funding following families through Florida’s choice programs.

One distinction matters to me. I found no evidence that Ávila designed or personally championed Donalds’ proposal for universal individualized learning plans. Supporting Florida’s broader school-choice agenda does not automatically establish that Ávila owns every education proposal Donalds has advanced.

The Everglades

Ávila has a specific pro-Everglades action in his legislative history.

In 2020, he sponsored HB 775, dealing with the Everglades Protection Area. The bill would have required comprehensive plans and amendments affecting certain land inside or near the protected area to undergo Florida’s more rigorous state-coordinated review process. It required the Department of Environmental Protection to consult and coordinate with other government entities and imposed additional requirements on specified development amendments within the Everglades Protection Area.

The measure passed two House committees unanimously but died in the State Affairs Committee without receiving a floor vote.

That is meaningful evidence that Ávila attempted to strengthen state oversight of decisions affecting the Everglades. It is not enough by itself to crown him an environmental champion, particularly because the bill never became law. But it is a real proposal with his name on it, not a campaign promise invented for this election.

Taxes and the cost of living

Ávila has spent years working on tax policy. He chaired the House Ways and Means Committee and later the Senate Finance and Tax Committee.

He sponsored the Senate version of the constitutional amendment going before Florida voters in November. The proposal would increase the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, followed by inflation adjustments.

Supporters describe it as major relief for homeowners facing rising assessments and local tax bills. Critics warn that it could remove billions from local-government revenue used for police, fire protection, infrastructure and other services. Because it is a constitutional amendment, voters—not Ávila or the Legislature alone—will make the final decision.

Ávila has also repeatedly criticized waste and spending in Miami-Dade County. His record is strongest on reducing property-tax burdens and limiting local-government costs, although voters should watch how any tax reduction affects the services counties are still legally expected to provide.

Data centers: two bills, two different questions

The data-center issue is why Ávila’s name first reached my feed.

He sponsored SB 484, which passed the Legislature and was signed by DeSantis. The enacted law preserves local authority over comprehensive planning and land-use regulation involving major electricity users. It requires utilities to create tariffs intended to keep the infrastructure and electricity costs generated by extremely large customers from being shifted onto ordinary ratepayers. It adds water-permitting restrictions for large-scale data centers and orders a statewide study of their construction and operation.

That is the law that passed.

Ávila also sponsored SB 1118, a linked public-records proposal. It would have allowed a company to ask a county or municipality to conceal information concerning its plans or interest in locating a data center for up to 12 months, provided the request occurred before a formal application was filed. The local government would still have been required to disclose that the proposed project was a data center. The bill also protected qualifying proprietary business information.

Critics argued that the measure withheld too much information from the public during the period when residents most needed to know what might be coming. Ávila argued that temporary confidentiality is a standard economic-development tool that prevents land speculation and protects negotiations.

SB 1118 died on the Senate calendar. It did not become law.

The distinction matters. The enacted data-center law contains protections for local zoning authority, water resources and ordinary utility customers. The confidentiality bill raised a separate transparency question and failed. Both are part of the record.

The Resiliency and Safe Structures Act

In 2024, Ávila sponsored the Resiliency and Safe Structures Act. It restricts the ability of local governments and preservation boards to block the demolition of certain older or nonconforming structures in designated coastal flood zones. It also limits additional local hearings and development restrictions imposed solely because an eligible structure was demolished.

Preservationists, particularly in Miami Beach, called it a giveaway to developers and an attack on local historic protection. Ávila and other supporters described it as a property-rights and public-safety response to the Surfside condominium collapse. The final legislation included exclusions and geographic limitations protecting some historic properties and districts.

The law passed the Senate 36–2 and the House 86–29 before DeSantis signed it.

Money, donors and influence

Ávila raises money through the networks that regularly finance established South Florida legislators: real estate, construction, automobile dealers, professional associations and lobbying interests.

That is not proof of corruption. It is also not irrelevant.

Reporting in 2023 found that more than one-third of his third-quarter fundraising came from automobile dealerships after he sponsored legislation affecting that industry. Developer and real-estate money also appeared around legislation important to those sectors.

Campaign donations do not establish that a vote was purchased. They do establish relationships voters are entitled to examine—particularly when a legislator chairs powerful tax committees and sponsors measures with direct financial consequences for donors.

How conservative is he?

The American Conservative Union, now associated with CPAC, identified Ávila as the most conservative member of the Florida Legislature in 2024. Club for Growth gave him an 86 percent score for 2024 and a 76 percent lifetime score.

Those ratings measure selected votes chosen by the organizations issuing the scores. They are evidence of how consistently Ávila votes with those groups’ priorities; they are not independent proof that every conservative voter will agree with every vote.

His record includes the Stop WOKE Act, parental rights, abortion restrictions, permitless concealed carry, immigration enforcement, tax relief and opposition to communist influence. It also includes the 2018 Parkland gun package, the proposed data-center confidentiality exemption and close relationships with industries affected by his legislation.

That is more informative than a score alone.

Why Donalds chose him

Ávila did not suddenly appear beside Donalds at the Freedom Tower.

He served as a co-chair of Veterans for Byron and joined Donalds in Hialeah for the May launch of Latinos for Byron. They had already appeared together publicly. The selection brings Donalds a running mate with twelve years of legislative experience, military service, deep roots in Miami-Dade’s Cuban-American community and an established anti-communist message.

The location completed the picture. The Freedom Tower is inseparable from the history of Cuban refugees arriving in Miami. The announcement placed Ávila’s family story, his military service and the campaign’s anti-socialist argument inside the same frame.

It was strategic. It was also consistent with who Ávila has publicly said he is.

My conclusion

I did not know Bryan Ávila when his name first appeared in my feed. Now I know considerably more.

He is not open borders. His vote for E-Verify and Florida’s immigration-enforcement law settles that question as clearly as a state legislative record can.

He is pro-life. He voted for both the 15-week and six-week abortion laws and supported parental consent.

He is conservative on education. His record favors parental authority, school choice, civic education, teaching the history of communism and restricting ideological instruction.

He has a documented pro-Everglades proposal in his record, although it died before passage and does not by itself establish an entire environmental philosophy.

On the Second Amendment, the answer is more complicated. He supported permitless concealed carry and opposed advancing an assault-weapons ban. But he also voted for the 2018 Parkland package containing red-flag orders, the under-21 purchase restriction, expanded waiting periods and a bump-stock ban. For voters who draw an absolute line on those policies, that vote matters.

Ávila is not an outsider and not a wrecking ball. He is an experienced legislator who knows how to operate within the Republican majority and has built long relationships with donors, industries, police organizations and party leadership. That is an advantage if the goal is moving an agenda through Tallahassee. It is a legitimate concern if the goal is breaking with Tallahassee’s established networks.

The anti-communist part is not marketing. It is the through-line. The rest of the record is conservative, substantial and mostly consistent—but not beyond questioning. The data-center confidentiality proposal deserves scrutiny. The donor relationships deserve scrutiny. The Parkland vote deserves scrutiny.

That is the point of a deep dive. Not to manufacture a hero or a villain. To know exactly who may be one election away from becoming Florida’s lieutenant governor.

Sources

1. Ávila’s archived Florida Senate profile and legislative record:https://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/2022-2024/S39

2. Immigration enforcement — SB 1718:https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1718

3. Ávila’s recorded vote for SB 1718:https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1718/Vote/SenateVote_s01718c2037.PDF

4. Permitless concealed carry — HB 543:https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/543

5. Six-week abortion law — SB 300:https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/300

6. Marjory Stoneman Douglas school-safety and gun legislation — SB 7026:https://flhouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=62852

7. Everglades protection — HB 775:https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2020/775

8. Data-center regulation — SB 484:https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2026/484

9. Data-center confidentiality proposal — SB 1118:https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2026/1118