Vigils for the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk are drawing crowds of young conservatives to college campuses across Arizona.
On the University of Arizona campus Tuesday night, organizers threw Make America Great Again hats to the crowd of a few hundred people at the Bear Down Gym before leadership of the university’s chapter of Turning Point USA gave speeches and led the crowd in many prayers.
Speakers and guests frequently referred to his death as a “Turning Point,” invoking the name of the conservative organization founded by Kirk that has chapters across 3,500 universities, according to its website.
“My prayer tonight is that you use this horrific loss to realize this is, in fact, not a left versus right problem anymore, but instead a spiritual battle between good versus evil. What side do you want to be on?” said UA’s chapter president Ashlee Mendola.
Mendola told the crowd their Instagram account gained over 2,000 new followers in the last week, and over 100 requests to join their chapter’s GroupMe messenger.
Vice President Neave Rojas said she got involved with Turning Point after seeing Kirk on campus in Oct. 2024, as a stop on the “You’re Being Brainwashed” tour.
She said attending the Turning Point’s Chapter Leadership Summit over the summer made her feel “on fire.”
“That was the moment I knew I wanted to change and where I needed to step up,” she told the crowd. “That feeling of fire did not come out of nowhere. It came from Jesus. Jesus knew Ashlee and I were meant to be leaders of such a strong organization in such a scary world.”
According to Vox’s analysis of the spring 2025 Harvard Youth Poll, the younger cohort of Gen Z between the ages of 18 and 24 are leaning more conservative than the cohort aged 25 to 29.
One data point shows a more favorable view of Republicans amongst the younger cohort. The older group shows a 35-point margin of disapproval towards the Republican Party, compared to a 28-point margin among the younger group
18 year old Jasher Kenerson attended the UofA rally. He’d been a fan of Charlie Kirk since he was 15, after finding his videos on Youtube. Kenerson said he was drawn to Kirk’s emphasis on the “importance of Christianity in our nation,” and he thinks young people are finding community in Republican spaces through religion.
“They're looking for something to support them, and Christianity really reaches out to that, and through that, conservatism,” he said.
Turning Point USA chapters are experiencing a surge of interest in membership across the country. The organization posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, had received over 54,000 requests to start chapters in the six days since founder Kirk died.
