Byron Donalds to spend at least $1M on new Spanish-language campaign ads

Byron Donalds’ gubernatorial campaign is spending more than $1 million on a new ad targeting Spanish-speaking voters and prominently featuring his running mate, former Hialeah state Sen. Bryan Ávila.

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The “seven-figure Spanish-language” effort marks the “campaign’s largest commitments to date to reach Hispanic voters in every corner of the state,” according to a statement from the campaign.

The ad spend comes as polls show that the Hispanic and Latino voting coalitions that helped elect Donald Trump in 2024 have been swinging away from the Republican Party, partly in response to his sweeping detention and deportation agenda. Those efforts have disproportionately impacted immigrant communities in Miami as the state has aggressively expanded its partnerships with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The campaign’s new statewide ad opens with a shot of the Miami native and plays a clip of Ávila declaring in Spanish that he and Donalds will fight for a more affordable Florida while at the Freedom Tower in Miami last month.

Ávila’s role carrying Donalds’ campaign message to voters in Spanish has not always been well-received among the MAGA base. At a campaign event in Kissimmee this week, an attendee heckled Ávila for addressing the crowd in Spanish, yelling out “Speak in English.”

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And Donalds drew some of the loudest boos at a forum Tuesday at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University while talking about his alignment with Trump’s immigration agenda.

The campaign said the new ads are focused on “issues Hispanic families raise most,” including affordability and insurance costs. About 18% of Florida’s 13 million voters are Hispanic, according to voter registration data, including more than 800,000 Republicans.

Donalds’ Hispanic outreach director, Laura Roscoe, said the new ads are intended to reach a wide swath of Spanish-speaking voters in Florida.

“Whether a family is Cuban, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan, Colombian, or from anywhere else in Latin America, each brings its own history and its own experiences,” she said in a statement. “Byron Donalds and Bryan Avila understand that.”

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