Who Is Júlia Zanatta? Brazil’s PL Congresswoman and Her Campaign

BRAZIL · PROFILE, 26 SEPTEMBER 2026

In Santa Catarina’s coal country, Júlia Zanatta turned twelve years of back-room political communications work into one of the most visible congressional careers of Brazil’s conservative movement. In her first run for federal office she outpolled every candidate in the state’s south. Four years later she is a PL vice-leader, an award-winning incumbent — and, by her own public offer, available for the vice-presidency if Flávio Bolsonaro wants her.

From Criciúma to Brasília

Zanatta was born in Criciúma, in the south of Santa Catarina, on 20 March 1985. She studied journalism at the Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina (Unisul, 2004–2008) and later law at Faculdade Cesusc in Florianópolis (2013–2018). Before holding office she spent twelve years as a political communications advisor in the state and served as regional coordinator for the south at Embratur, Brazil’s tourism agency, until March 2022.

She joined the Liberal Party in 2020 and ran for mayor of Criciúma the same year, finishing third with 6,953 votes (7.03 percent of valid votes). Two years later she won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies with 111,588 votes — the sixth-highest tally in Santa Catarina and the highest in its southern region.

Júlia Zanatta, federal deputy (PL-SC), elected in 2022 with 111,588 votes.

What She Stands For

Zanatta’s stated platform centers on the right to self-defense and gun ownership, economic freedom, and family autonomy in education. She opposes abortion and campaigned for a Federal Council of Medicine technical rule restricting procedures preparatory to abortion. In schools, she says she fights what she describes as ideological indoctrination — a theme that runs through her floor speeches and her social channels.

In the current legislature she has served as a PL vice-leader since December 2025 and held rotating vice-leaderships of the minority and opposition blocs in early 2026, according to Chamber records — junior whip roles that place her inside the party’s day-to-day negotiations.

The Vaccine Bills Fight

Her most contested legislative record involves vaccination. In 2023 she filed a legislative decree bill (PDC 486/2023) to suspend mandatory Covid-19 vaccination for children aged six months to five years, arguing the shots were not compulsory in any country at the time. In 2025 she went further: PL 2643/2025 would free parents from any obligation to vaccinate minors, and PL 2641/2025 would ban compulsory vaccination nationwide and create a new crime of “vaccine coercion” in the Penal Code.

The bills drew a request for action to the Attorney General’s office in 2025 from Prerrogativas, a lawyers’ group, which described her record as a systematic health disinformation campaign. The request did not result in charges, and Zanatta frames the fight as one over parental choice rather than medicine.

Taking the Censorship Fight Abroad

In May 2024 Zanatta joined Eduardo Bolsonaro and other pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers at an event in Buenos Aires titled “Censorship, Freedom of Expression, and Human Rights in Brazil,” organized by Argentine deputy María Celeste Ponce, an ally of President Javier Milei. There she accused Brazil’s judiciary of persecuting political opponents — an early sign that the congresswoman saw her mandate as international as well as parochial. (The Rio Times covered the Buenos Aires event in May 2024.)

Family and the CPAC Connection

Her husband, businessman Guilherme Colombo, is a political organizer in his own right: he runs the Brazilian edition of CPAC, the conservative conference held in Balneário Camboriú, and is running for state deputy in Santa Catarina this year. Colombo was banned from Uber in November 2022 over an alleged racism episode — a case that resurfaced in 2024 when he sued the platform to be reinstated. The couple form one of the PL’s most networked households in the state.

2026: Re-Election and the Vice-Presidency Offer

In June 2026, encouraged by Eduardo Bolsonaro, Zanatta publicly offered herself as a vice-presidential candidate on Flávio Bolsonaro’s ticket, telling CNN Brasil she was “ready for the fight” while adding she would accept whatever the Bolsonaro family and PL president Valdemar Costa Neto decided. The party had earlier weighed a Senate slate in Santa Catarina pairing her with fellow deputy Carol de Toni, but Zanatta ultimately registered to defend her Chamber seat, running under the number 2233.

She campaigns with fresh hardware: in August she won the popular vote for best federal deputy of Santa Catarina in the 2026 Congresso em Foco award, and her social following — about 593,000 — gives her one of the strongest digital operations in the state’s delegation. Santa Catarina votes on 4 October, the same day Brazil chooses its president.

The Record in Numbers

Her electoral curve is steep: 6,953 votes (7.03 percent) in the 2020 Criciúma mayoral race, then 111,588 votes two years later — 2.81 percent of Santa Catarina’s valid ballots, sixth-best in the state and first in its south. In Brasília she has stayed legislatively active rather than merely vocal, filing serial amendments to the government’s provisional measures this year, including a cluster to MPV 1355/2026 in May. Party whips count her as reliable on economic-liberal votes and as one of the PL’s most disciplined social-media communicators — a combination that explains why the party keeps handing her vice-leaderships.

FAQ

Who is Júlia Zanatta? A lawyer and journalist from Criciúma, Santa Catarina, elected federal deputy for the PL in 2022 with 111,588 votes.

Is she running in 2026? Yes — for re-election to the Chamber of Deputies, candidate number 2233. She also offered herself as a possible running mate to Flávio Bolsonaro.

What are her main positions? Gun rights and self-defense, economic freedom, family autonomy in education, opposition to abortion, and bills against mandatory vaccination.

Why is she controversial? Critics, including the lawyers’ group Prerrogativas, accuse her of spreading health disinformation through her vaccine bills; she says the fight is about parental choice.

More: Brazil election 2026: the full guide · Who is Michelle Bolsonaro? · Brazil news in English, every day from The Rio Times.

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