Charlie Kirk, the conservative millennial influencer who galvanized young Americans to support the GOP and was assassinated this week in Utah, was the most influential modern-day catalyst of shifting voting trends among fledgling voters, according to Republican and Democratic strategists.
Kirk founded the nonprofit Turning Point USA in 2012 at the age of 18, and it grew into a force that promoted conservative views on high school and college campuses across the nation.
“He found something among young people that none of us identified,” said Shawn Steel, a member of the Republican National Committee from Orange County who knew Kirk for nearly a decade and invited him to speak before the RNC’s conservative steering committee.
“He found an entire movement in America that conservatives were not even aware they could find. Not only that, he nurtured and created an entire new generation of conservative activists,” said Steel, the husband of former Rep. Michelle Steel. “His legacy will endure.”
The admiration for Kirk’s political organizing skills and mental acuity cut across political lines.
“Whether you agreed with him or not — and to be clear, I didn’t — he was one of the most brilliant political organizers of his generation, and probably generations before that,” said Stephanie Cutter, a veteran Democratic strategist who served as an advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris. “He could be controversial, but he struck a nerve with people who were likely disengaged in politics prior to Turning Point and built a powerful movement.”
In addition to appealing to young voters about the economic headwinds they faced as they sought to climb the career ladder and tried to buy a house, Kirk also espoused sharply conservative views.
Beyond espousing traditional conservative views — being anti-abortion, pro-gun rights and dubious of climate change — Kirk was critical of gay and transgender rights, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saying last year that if he saw a Black airplane pilot, he hoped he was qualified. He was accused of being an anti-Semite because of repeated comments about the power of Jewish donors in the United States, and of being Islamophobic because of comments such as describing “large dedicated Islamic areas” as “a threat to America.”
Kirk, 31 and a father of two, died Wednesday after being shot in the neck while speaking at Utah Valley University. Kirk’s assassination was the latest instance of political violence in an increasingly politically polarized country.
In June, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, while state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife survived a shooting at their home, roughly five miles away, the same day. In 2022, a home invader bludgeoned the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). In 2017, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot during a practice session for an annual congressional baseball game. In 2011, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) barely survived an assassination attempt as she met with constituents in a Tucson strip mall.
President Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024 as he successfully sought reelection to the White House.
Kirk’s “mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever, to share his love of country and to spread the simple words of common sense on campuses nationwide,” Trump said Wednesday.
On Thursday, Trump told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn that Kirk was partly responsible for his victory in the 2024 presidential election and repeated that he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Turning Point USA, created a month before Kirk graduated from high school, became the new face of conservatism on college campuses and had chapters at more than 800 schools. Prominent conservatives heavily funded the group; in the fiscal year that ended in June of 2024, Turning Point reported $85 million in revenue.
Longtime GOP activist Jon Fleischman, the former executive director of the California Republican Party and the former chairman of the state’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom in the early 1990s, said Kirk was pivotal to Trump’s election.
“Charlie Kirk was probably the single most prominent and successful youth organizer in the Trump movement,” Fleischman said, adding that Kirk superseded any other GOP organizer he knew at increasing conservative prospects among young voters.
“As somebody who cut their teeth as a youth organizer, I have nothing but awe for the level of sophistication he brought to that field of work,” he said.
Support for Trump among young voters exponentially increased in the 2024 presidential election, according to data compiled by Tufts University. While President Biden had a 25-point edge over Trump among voters ages 18 to 29 in the 2020 election, Harris had a four-point advantage among this cohort last year.
“This last election was the best performance Republicans have had with the youth vote, particularly male voters, in 20 years, maybe even going back to the ’80s,” said Steve Deace, a conservative radio host in Iowa who had known Kirk for a decade.
He gave credit for that success partly to work Kirk did on the ground at colleges across the country, notably being willing to amicably debate with people who disagreed with his beliefs.
“Charlie was basically a Renaissance man who was comfortable in a lot of settings. He wasn’t hoity-toity,” he said.
Deace and others added that this moment could be a turning point for the nation’s democracy and the split between the left and the right.
“We’re going to have a real conversation about whether we can share a country or not. The answer may be we can’t,” Deace said. “We have to decide if we are capable of the fundamental differences between us being adjudicated at the ballot box…. We have to decide if we can share a country. If we truly want to, we’ll figure it out. If we don’t, we won’t. That’s the conversation that needs to happen.”
Bombastic conservative commentator Roger Stone went further, arguing that modern-day Democrats are a greater threat to the nation than terrorists, drug cartels and foreign spies.
“The rot is too deep to reverse our course with mere rhetoric,” Stone wrote to supporters. “Sept. 10, 2025 was the day we crossed the Rubicon, lost our innocence and realized only one path remains to ensure humanity’s survival. The time for American renewal is at hand, and the tree of liberty shall germinate in warp speed with Charlie Kirk serving as the martyr of our glorious refounding.”