In the days since founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus, Turning Point Action has channeled grief into purpose by doubling down on its voter registration mission.
By midweek, the push was already visible on multiple fronts. On Wednesday, the group welcomed a training class of Chase The Vote representatives, who will fan out into communities to register voters and drive turnout.
Our Turning Point Action COO @tylerbowyer welcoming a full training class of Chase The Vote reps!
These reps are heading into our communities to carry the mission forward and get out the vote. The work continues!@TPAction_ pic.twitter.com/F9OQxr7fza
— Jeannette Garcia (@Jnet_margarita) September 23, 2025
That same day, Turning Point USA’s campus tour rolled into Virginia Tech University, where Gov. Glenn Youngkin and media personality Megyn Kelly headlined an event that drew lines of supporters and energized young voters.
The most visible show of force came on Sunday, when thousands gathered at State Farm Stadium for Kirk’s memorial. The over five-hour program doubled as a rallying point for political activism, as 500 volunteers with the organization’s political arm fanned out along the security lines with clipboards and registration forms, determined to turn mourning into mobilization.
“We decided it’s no question, we need to register as many voters while we’re there,” Turning Point Action Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer told the Washington Examiner in an interview days after Kirk’s death. “We estimate that about 30 percent of people there have expired voter registration or just not registered at all.”
Bowyer, the longest-serving Turning Point employee, first joined the group when it was only a handful of staffers and remained one of Kirk’s closest confidants as the organization grew into a national force. He is widely seen inside the movement as the operational architect, overseeing the ground game and voter registration machine that has become central to the group’s strategy.
While Turning Point did not release figures on the number of new registered voters in the two weeks since Kirk’s murder, Bowyer said the registration drives reflect his late friend’s instincts.
“Charlie would be outside with a bullhorn doing it himself,” Bowyer said. “We would do it for groups of 20 people, and with tens of thousands of people there to mourn him and to remember his life, we knew we had a job to do in his honor.”
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who is running for governor and was endorsed by Kirk about four months ago, said the work Turning Point and its affiliates are doing is reshaping Arizona politics.
“Turning Point and a bunch of other affiliate organizations have been working hard, and we’ve already doubled the number of Republican voters as our lead over Democrats since November,” Biggs said. “Not only that, TPUSA and their affiliates also helped get out more than 300,000 low-propensity voters, and that’s how we’re going to keep winning in this state.”
Between March 2024 and July 2025, the Republican registration count in Arizona rose by about 160,000 voters, an 11% increase. Over the same period, Democratic registration grew by about 38,000 voters, or roughly 3%.
You guys know how many times we heard 18 year olds say “for Charlie” as they were registering to vote for the first time?
It’s incredible to think about the long term impact of yesterday. @TPAction_ is going to soar! pic.twitter.com/aiDgZyIaRj
— Brett Galaszewski (@bgalsWI) September 22, 2025
Laura Loomer, a conservative activist and a close ally of President Donald Trump, said the memorial could become a political catalyst.
“If this does not move the Republicans to take action on things that need to happen, then his death will be in vain,” Loomer said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “I saw a lot of people posting online that they were going to register to vote, and they were also saying that they were leaving the Democrat Party.”
She added, “Up until Charlie’s assassination, I thought that the Republicans were going to lose the House. But maybe, just maybe, this is going to, I say, be a turning point, pun intended, for our country.”
For some in the Sunday crowd in Arizona, the moment was about looking ahead. Gracyn Rathel, a 16-year-old from Orlando, Florida, who will be old enough to vote in 2026, said she left inspired. “I will feel very proud that I can contribute to female voting and contribute to conservatives in the next election,” she said.
The surge of activity at the memorial fits into a wider Republican push to erase Democrats’ registration advantages in battleground states. In Florida, where Democrats held a narrow edge as recently as 2020, Republicans now lead the rolls by more than 900,000 voters, a swing of well over a million in just five years. In Pennsylvania, Democrats’ advantage has fallen from close to a million a decade ago to only tens of thousands today, with the gap shrinking dramatically in the last two election cycles. And in Georgia, aggressive roll maintenance and steady Republican registration drives have helped the GOP blunt Democrats’ earlier gains and remain competitive in statewide contests.
In Arizona, Bowyer said his team’s target is to outpace Democrats by as many as 400,000 to 500,000 registrations. “We’re at Country Thunder. We’re at Phoenix Raceway. We’re at every concert venue. We’re at the Phoenix Open,” he said.
TRUMP’S GROUND GAME GAMBLE PAYS OFF BUT COMES WITH WARNING SIGN
The approach builds on a model Turning Point Action tested in 2024, when the Trump campaign leaned heavily on third-party groups to chase low-propensity voters. That year, the organization claimed credit for turning out an estimated 200,000 such voters in Arizona and helped Trump notch narrow wins in states like Wisconsin.
Republican operatives at the time warned that outsourcing the ground game to outside groups could pose risks for future cycles, but Kirk and his team described the results as vindication. “When other people were too busy trying to plant stories against us, we were putting ballots in boxes,” Kirk told the Washington Examiner in an interview shortly after Election Day 2024.
Similar efforts, GOP strategists argue, have given Republicans confidence they can withstand Democratic turnout operations heading into the 2026 midterm elections. For Turning Point Action, capitalizing on large cultural gatherings, whether at music festivals or memorials, has become central to its strategy.
“We’re not politicizing Charlie’s death,” Bowyer said. “We’re honoring him. We’re going to do the work that he had set out to do.”
Reflecting on the crowds, Bowyer said the response was unprecedented. “I think Charlie would be humbled by it,” he said. “This wasn’t like we had a plan, it was really God’s plan … the greatest honor is that organic love that exists because it’s not fake, it’s not forced.”
By nightfall Sunday, staff members carried out dozens of banker’s boxes filled with completed voter registration forms. Turning Point Action said it is still counting the paperwork and has not yet released the number of people registered at the event.
