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Miami, Florida - The Florida Governor’s race requires the picking of a running-mate, so everyone is guessing who will stand next to Byron Donalds at Freedom Tower on Tuesday morning this week.
Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for Governor of Florida, is coming to Miami. The “major announcement” his campaign has teased for Tuesday at Freedom Tower is being read across Florida politics the same way: this is the running-mate reveal. The chatter centers on one Miami-Dade state senator. The more interesting story is the pattern behind the choice—and a “historic first” that already happened six years ago.
Florida already did the “historic” part. If Byron Donalds names a Latina running mate, it will be a first for his ticket, not for Florida. Former State Representative Jeanette Núñez, a Miami-Dade Republican, was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor for Governor Ron DeSantis in January 2019—the state’s first Latina to hold the office. She served with Ron DeSantis until February 2025, when she left to become President of Florida International University. Whoever stands at Freedom Tower, that milestone is already six years old.
Representative Jeanette Nunez, however, was not the first choice for that appointment by DeSantis as Lieutenant Governor of Florida. That first choice was State Senator Ani-Tere Flores, another Latina from South Florida. Ani-Tere, however, was exposed on video as reaching out across the aisle and having a sexual relationship with a Democrat legislator. Ani-Tere like Jeannette was a graduate of Florida International University, but Ani-Tere also had a law degree from the University of Florida, so she operated at a higher level professionally than Jeannette.
The ticket almost always splits the map
Donalds is a Naples Republican from Collier County on the southwest Gulf coast. A Miami-Dade running mate exists to balance that geography. DeSantis made the same trade in 2018: a Jacksonville-area governor and a Miami-Dade lieutenant governor. If Tuesday’s pick comes from Miami-Dade County, no one in Tallahassee will be surprised. It is not a new strategy. It is the same map math, rerun.
How the last two Republican tickets split the state
• 2018: Ron DeSantis (Northeast Florida) + Jeanette Núñez (Miami-Dade)
• 2026: Byron Donalds (Southwest Florida / Naples) + who knows? (widely expected: Miami-Dade)
One reported front-runner, one dark horse
Politico’s Florida Playbook flagged State Sen. Bryan Ávila as the Miami-Dade name to watch. The darker-horse case belongs to Miami-Dade Commission Chairman Anthony Rodriguez, a Miami native who chairs the County’s governing board, represents its most Republican district, and served in the Florida House alongside Donalds.
Bryan Ávila: Cuban-American, son of Cuban refugees; electoral base in Hialeah/West Miami-Dade. Served in the Florida House (including as Speaker Pro Tempore) and now in the Senate. His political action committee spent $30,000 backing Jay Collins’ 2022 Senate run. Named on Politico’s published list.
Anthony Rodriguez: Born in Miami, Miami Sunset Senior High School. Represents County Commission, District 10 (Kendall, Westchester, Fontainebleau), the County’s most Republican district. Served in the Florida House 2018–2022, overlapping Donalds’ final House term. Unanimously elected Chairman of the 13-member County Commission in 2024. Not yet on published shortlists. Mistakenly stated that incumbency is not an electoral advantate.
Handicapping the other Miami-Dade names
Senator Ávila’s political action committee” backing of Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins for Governor, against Byron Donalds, is a mark against him with the Donalds camp.. Collins took 15.9 percent in Miami-Dade’s gubernatorial primary—a distant second in the county these men call home.
State Representative Omar Blanco, the former firefighter-union president now representing House District 115, carries crossover credentials. As union chief he worked both sides of the aisle, including for a Democratic state Senate candidate, and his union endorsed Democrat County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. Those credentials help a labor leader. They read differently in a Republican running-mate vetting.
State Representative Juan Carlos Porras, born in 1997 and elected to House District 119 in 2022, is the first Gen Z member of the Florida House of Representatives, and the least-tested name on any list. He appeared at the podium at Versailles, the most iconic Cuban restaurant, during early voting for Emilio González, the Trump-endorsed Republican who lost the December 2025 Miami mayoral runoff to Democrat Eileen Higgins—the highest-profile Republican defeat in the city in nearly three decades.
Run the process of elimination and the Miami-Dade County name left standing is the County Commission Chairman who ran unopposed: Anthony Rodriguez.
The Chairman argument
Miami-Dade County Republicans hold a voter registration edge of roughly 48,000 voters (about 35.3% Republican to 31.6% Democrat). That edge wins primaries. A statewide ticket needs something harder: a Miami-Dade County name with bipartisan reach and actual political muscle. The Chairmanship of the County Commission is the one credential on this page conferred across party lines. In November 2024 the 13-member Commission—officially nonpartisan, in practice a mix of Democrats and Republicans—elected Rodriguez Chairman unanimously, with former Democratic House leader Kionne McGhee as Vice Chairman. Every other name holds a credential Republicans gave them. Rodriguez holds one Democrats voted for as well.
Why a Miami-Dade pick makes arithmetic sense
Hispanic voters are Florida’s second-largest voting bloc by race/ethnicity—3.07 million on the file—concentrated most heavily in Miami-Dade, a county that has flipped Republican in registration. A Southwest Florida gubernatorial candidate, plus a Miami-Dade running mate, reaches the fastest-growing wing of the GOP coalition without Donalds leaving his own base.
A Naples governor and a Miami-Dade lieutenant governor is not a bold new coalition. It is the same map DeSantis and Núñez drew in 2018, redrawn for a new ticket.
There is already a playbook for a Miami-Dade office for the Lieutenant Governor
Jeannette Núñez tested the question of whether a Miami-based Lieutenant Governor would actually work out of Tallahassee. From her 2019 inauguration she sought to base the office in her home county, with space at Florida International University. The arrangement ran through budget-conference language allowing the Lieutenant Governor to “set up an official headquarters in his or her own home county” for a given fiscal year, with Tallahassee travel reimbursed at the Governor’s discretion. It was granted in at least one budget cycle and never settled as permanent statute. That is enough to make the Chairman Rodriguez theory plausible. It is not proof that history simply repeats.
This pick is really about 2028
The Governor elected this November serves January 2027 through January 2031—the entirety of the 2028 presidential cycle, when the state party’s machinery will be tested at maximum load. Miami-Dade Republicans hold a registration advantage, yet they recently lost Miami City Hall to a Democrat despite a Trump endorsement. A registration edge that does not convert into victories is a machinery problem: turnout, ground game, organization. Read that way, the running-mate decision is only partly about November. It is about who can get Miami-Dade’s Republican apparatus actually running before the biggest race of the cycle arrives in two years.
What is confirmed versus what is not
The Tuesday event at Freedom Tower is confirmed by Donalds’ campaign. That it is a running-mate reveal is the read of Politico’s Florida team; the campaign has not said so publicly. Senator Ávila’s presence on the published shortlist is reported. Senator Rodriguez has not appeared in shortlist reporting. The case for him rests on the record: the chairmanship, the district, the House years with Donalds, and a biography that begins in Miami.
A closing word for the field
“It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 1910.
Senator Ávila, Senator González, Representative Blanco, and Representative Porras put their names behind candidates and campaigns. They got in the arena. This series, the pollsters, and the journalists are counting from the stands. Tuesday at Freedom Tower, one Miami-Dade Republican stops being a name on a list. The rest of us go back to counting.
On Tuesday morning, Congressman Byron Donalds announced his pick for Lieutenant Governor as State Senator Bryan Avila (R-Hialeah). It was a good choice and a safe choice, and should win the general election.