Charlie Kirk’s influence on his followers started well before college

In the days since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, discussion of his legacy has often turned to his work galvanizing conservatives on college campuses. But he was also influential among an even younger audience.

Through Turning Point USA, the right-wing political organization he founded in 2012, Kirk reached many of his followers long before they set foot on a university campus. The group has around 1,200 chapters at high schools — hundreds more than it has at colleges, Andrew Kolvet, a Turning Point spokesperson, wrote on the social platform X this week.

Mr Kirk’s teenage fans extend well beyond fledgling conservatives in red states. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, said at a news conference Tuesday that his 14-year-old son, Hunter, had called him from school the moment he heard that Mr Kirk had been shot, anxious for news of his condition. He had been an admirer.

Conversations with his son served as “a reminder of how many young people were impacted by this death in a pretty profound way,” Mr Newsom said.

Mr Kirk’s killing has reverberated among the high school students who saw him as a model for how to advance conservative viewpoints against the arguments of their more liberal peers, and as a political figure who recognized the organizing might of Republican teenagers.

At an online vigil held Monday night by the High School Republican National Federation and the South Dakota chapter of the High School Democrats of America, speakers read Bible verses and shared a sentiment that Mr Kirk had taken their age group seriously.

“Charlie’s big thing was, he believed in young people,” Connor McFarland, 16, a high school junior in Katy, Texas, told a group of around 20 students at the vigil. “He believed in our voice, our courage.”

Henry Hook, 16, a high school junior in Washington, spoke about how Mr Kirk had written for the right-wing opinion site Breitbart News as a high school student and founded Turning Point USA when he was 18. Mr Kirk illustrated that political activism “can start right in high school, where we all are,” he said.

Mr Kirk argued that young people were on the front lines of the country’s ideological debates over issues including LGBTQ+ rights and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, both of which he stridently opposed. His comments were frequently criticized as discriminatory, as when he called for providers of gender-affirming care to be given “a Nuremberg-style trial” or said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an antiwhite weapon.”

Those are not the positions that young supporters tend to bring up when asked what attracted them to Mr Kirk. Rather, in interviews, several high school students said they saw him as a model for blending faith with politics or as a champion of more traditional family structures.

Through Turning Point USA’s high school arm, Club America, he provided forums in which young people could engage with conservative beliefs long before they could support them on a ballot.

Mr Kolvet, the Turning Point spokesperson, did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

The organization supplies grants for “pro-free market” events as well as meeting agendas to help students to discuss what it describes as the dangers of socialism and the unfairness of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. Students who join high school chapters can order free activism kits containing posters with phrases including “Embrace Patriotism” and “Protect Our Kids, Arm Our Schools.”

For Jaden Duffey, 18, Mr Kirk’s organization offered a steady stream of meeting ideas for the Turning Point chapter he ran at his high school in St. Johns, Florida, beginning his sophomore year. In an interview, Mr Duffey said he liked the way Mr Kirk had made politics and faith feel relatable to young people’s lives. “He didn’t talk down to us,” Mr Duffey said.

High school chapters of Turning Point USA helped conservative students ready themselves, Mr Duffey added, for the “ideological battle” that awaited them on liberal-leaning college campuses. He said that there were students at his high school who “vehemently disagreed” with MR Kirk on issues including abortion, gun rights and border security. “While I didn’t always agree with their assessment of him, I made it a point to respect their perspective and keep the conversation civil,” Mr Duffey said.

Now in his first year of college in Florida and the president of his county’s Young Republicans club, he helped organize a vigil for Mr Kirk on Sunday at a local park that drew a crowd of adults and teenagers.

Among the vigil’s speakers was Kiama Alligood, 18, a senior at nearby St. Augustine High School and the secretary of its Club America chapter. She described looking up to Mr Kirk and his wife, Erika Kirk, in an interview in which she said she was speaking for herself and not her chapter.

“They were that family, for me, that I could look at and say, like, ‘I would love to have a beautiful family like theirs someday,’” she said. Their argument that young people should focus on marrying early and having children resonated with her, she said.

After she saw the video of Mr Kirk’s assassination, “I prayed for hours,” she said.

Other high school students said Mr Kirk had appealed to them because he encouraged them to make their own decisions about politics and education and to reject pressure to go along with the beliefs of more liberal peers.

“He believed that college wasn’t necessary, which I also believe,” said Tyler, 16, who is the president of a Turning Point USA chapter at his high school in Citra, Florida. Tyler, whose mother asked that his surname not be used, said his chapter had only a handful of members until Mr Kirk was killed last week but that he had received about 20 requests to join since.

David Sharyan, 17, grew up in the Democratic-leaning city of Portland, Oregon, and said it was important for him to see “someone like Charlie Kirk saying, ‘It’s OK to be conservative’.”

Mr Sharyan, the chair of the High School Republican National Federation, first came across Mr Kirk through clips on social media in his first year of high school. He said he liked that Mr Kirk was not afraid to debate his positions on issues like immigration with those who did not agree with him.

“Whether you like him or not, he was a key factor in revitalizing the conservative youth,” Mr Sharyan said.

Several young followers of Mr Kirk’s said they felt even more determined to continue his mission after his death. Turning Point USA received more than 32,000 inquiries about starting new campus chapters after Mr Kirk’s killing, Mr Kolvet, the organization’s spokesperson, wrote on social media.

Mr Duffey, the college student, repeated a message he had seen circulating on his social media feeds: “The day Charlie Kirk was taken from us, a million Charlie Kirks were born.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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