Charlie Kirk built Turning Point USA into a powerhouse in Arizona. And a November election in Mesa may be the first test of the organization’s influence after his killing.
Critics and allies alike agree that Turning Point has been a singular force in the Grand Canyon State, remaking local Republican politics in its image. And the organization itself has cast a recall vote this November for a Republican city councilmember as a crucial stepstone in preserving Kirk’s legacy.
“Charlie Kirk’s influence on the ground game in Republican politics in Arizona cannot be [overstated],” said Stacy Pearson, a Democratic consultant in the state. “You have even some benign elections that typically no one’s paying any attention to that are being dominated by outreach from Turning Point, and one in particular, that I think will be the bellwether of what’s to come, is the local city council race in Mesa.”
In Mesa, City Councilmember Julie Spilsbury faces a recall vote driven by TPUSA, due in large part to her support of former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. Turning Point helped collect signatures to launch the recall effort, sent texts and emails to voters and continues to canvas against Spilsbury throughout Mesa, a city of over 500,000 people some 20 miles east of downtown Phoenix.
Spilsbury calls herself a lifelong Republican, but said in an interview she never identified with the MAGA wing of the party. She wasfirst elected to the Mesa City Council in 2020, and won reelection last year, even after divulging where she stood on the president in a separate April 2024 interview with NPR.
Everything changed late last year, when she spoke at a Republicans for Harris event and then cut a commercial for now-Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego.
A “year of hell” followed, she said.
“I feel like Turning Point is on a mission to flip all the nonpartisan city councils and school boards into partisan elections, and they want everyone to think the same way,” she said.
Blue yard signs bearing the Turning Point logo and blaring the text “FIX MESA. VOTE TAYLOR,” referencing Spilsbury’s opponent, Dorean Taylor, now dot city sidewalks. “Help Us Keep Charlies Legacy Alive,” reads a Turning Point Action email blast, provided to POLITICO by Spilsbury, telling attendees of Kirk’s memorial service that one way they could do so was by assisting in efforts to unseat Spilsbury.
“Today is Charlie Kirk’s birthday,” read a text message sent by Turning Point urging people to support Taylor. “He would have been here in Mesa today.”
And the organization’s most famous faces have publicly campaigned against her.
“JULIE SPILSBURY was all smiles trying to put Commie-la Harris into office,” Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point Action’s chief operating officer and a former RNC national committeeman, wrote on X in October, one of over 30 posts he’s made about Spilsbury in 2025. “This is who represents a Trump double digit district. Be gone!”
A Turning Point spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But Republican strategists in the state, even those who are either unaligned with the organization or butted heads with it, credit Turning Point for Arizona Republicans’ voter registration surge.
Republicans have gained more than 166,000 new registrants since November 2022, according to Paul Bentz, an Arizona-based Republican pollster. In that same period, Democrats lost over 600, he said.
“Turning Point in Arizona, simply by virtue of its organizational standing, its prowess, is perhaps the strongest force in Republican politics in the state right now,” said Kevin DeMenna, a longtime Republican Arizona political strategist who does not ascribe to the Turning Point movement.
But whether or not Spilsbury’s opponent runs up the score in the race could give a sense of Turning Point’s viability to affect the next generation of Arizona political races.
Arizona’s status as a critical swing state makes Turning Point’s long-term influence an even more important question. Former President Joe Biden won the state by less than 11,000 votes in 2020. In 2024, Trump won Arizona by close to 200,000 votes, on his way to sweeping all seven swing states.
But Democrats control Arizona’s top three statewide offices — governor, secretary of state and attorney general — and both Senate seats, after Trump-aligned candidates lost a series of close elections in 2022 and 2024.
Turning Point has focused on other hyperlocal elections in addition to Mesa, including the Salt River Project board elections taking place in April 2026. The board sets energy and climate goals for thousands of square miles of the state, serving more than 2 million people. Candidates can’t even file for the election until next year. But already, Turning Point has pledged to play a big role.
“My goal is to out register the Democrats 10-1 for the @VoteSRP Election,” Bowyer wrote on X in August. “We need to get the radical environmentalists out of AZ and prevent them from dramatically increasing our Utility rates.”
And even Turning Point’s Democratic rivals say that the organization’s focus at all levels of politics has transformed the state.
“These are places that these groups typically didn’t engage on either side,” Pearson said. “The voter registration operations on the Democratic Party were not telling 20 year olds to engage on an SRP Board election. And yet, Kirk’s apparatus and Turning Point is. I think Spilsbury and this SRP Board election are places where we’re really going to see what the impact of his loss has on the organization.”
These two elections — along with the midterms — will test the longevity of Turning Point after the assassination of its co-founder and public face.
Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, took the reins of the organization shortly after her husband’s death. She has vowed to carry on Kirk’s legacy, pledging to shape Turning Point into the “biggest thing this nation has ever seen” in remarks just hours after authorities announced the arrest of his alleged killer.
But what that future looks like for Turning Point is murky, Arizona Republicans said.
“This is a gentleman that clearly was presidential timber on a decade or two sort of timeline. All of that stopped, ended, or at least faces major changes,” DeMenna, the Republican consultant, said. “But once again, that’s populism, and to me, that’s usually lightning in a bottle. You can’t plan for it.”
But TPUSA allies are convinced the organization is here to stay. Rep. Andy Biggs, who Turning Point Action endorsed for Arizona’s 2026 governor race, thinks Kirk’s passing will only make the organization’s political messaging more potent.
“I would say that Charlie is a martyr, assassinated,” he said in an interview. “I think clearly Charlie liked to debate, he liked to have discussions. I think he legitimately wanted to move to reasoned discourse.”
“And the assassination of Charlie I think made him a martyr,” he continued. “And martyrs always grow, and their cause typically grows.”
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