Turning Point USA bet big on Arizona.
Leaders of the right-wing activist organization founded by Charlie Kirk said the state’s contest for governor was “the most important race in America.”
The group’s handpicked candidate, Representative Andy Biggs, a MAGA-aligned Republican, was one of the last politicians Mr. Kirk personally endorsed before his assassination last year. Its political arm spent nearly $20 million to support Mr. Biggs’s campaign.
But on Tuesday, Turning Point’s bet went bust.
In the group’s home state, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats, Mr. Biggs lost to Gov. Katie Hobbs by more than 10 percentage points, and Democrats thumped Turning Point’s chosen candidates for statewide and congressional races. The same happened in Nevada and New Hampshire, states where the group hoped to build conservative power and lay a foundation for the 2028 presidential contest.
Instead of vindicating a polarizing organization that has pitched itself as the future of the G.O.P., Tuesday’s results set off recriminations from establishment Republicans who have been exiled by Turning Point’s political machine.
“Turning Point is driving us to extinction,” said Gina Swoboda, the former Arizona Republican Party chairwoman who has feuded with the group. “They have become a destructive force in Republican politics.”
In the days since Republicans’ blowout loss, Turning Point leaders have been left to sift through the rubble of the “red wall” they had pledged to build in Arizona, Nevada and New Hampshire, states they view as critical battlegrounds. Despite the group’s significant investment, the only high-profile candidate in those three states who won with its backing was Kelly Ayotte, the incumbent governor of New Hampshire.
Turning Point and its allies have defended the group’s strategy, blaming Republican losses on a brutal national political environment stemming from President Trump’s deeply unpopular war with Iran. And they note that many other Republican candidates who ran without Turning Point’s backing lost by similar margins.
“I think it’s clear that we were up against a national wave that impacted every state,” Andrew Kolvet, Turning Point’s spokesman, said in a statement. “One of the mistakes you can make after a result like we had Tuesday is to learn the wrong lessons. Any suggestion that a more moderate candidate would have fared better is plain wrong.”
In a social media post, Erika Kirk, Mr. Kirk’s widow and Turning Point’s chief executive, said it was clear voters were “concerned about the state of the economy and the war in Iran.” The group’s leaders, she said, were poring over election results and would “spend the next two years making the case for how conservative, free market solutions, and a renewed focus on our country’s founding principles can address the problems the American people face.”
Turning Point, which is headquartered in Phoenix, has thousands of chapters at high schools and college campuses across the country, but its leadership has long considered Arizona to be the most important battleground for setting up national Republican victories. The group has honed its get-out-the-vote operations there and worked to remake the state’s G.O.P. in its image, championing hard-right primary challengers while muscling out the type of moderate Republicans exemplified by the late Senator John McCain.
But Arizona’s general election voters have repeatedly passed over Turning Point-supported candidates like Kari Lake and Blake Masters, allowing Democrats to take control of most major statewide offices and both U.S. Senate seats, even as Mr. Trump won the state in 2024.
This year, some Republicans warned that Turning Point had not learned from past mistakes. One misstep came in April, when the group’s unusual involvement in an obscure public utility election prompted a backlash that allowed a slate of liberal candidates to triumph.
And as the midterms approached, Turning Point elevated some candidates despite warnings from fellow Republicans that most voters would see them as too extreme.
The group’s operatives helped clear the primary field for Mr. Biggs by relentlessly attacking his chief competitor, the more moderate Karrin Taylor Robson, who dropped out early in the race after lagging in polls.
And Turning Point sparred publicly with Ms. Swoboda, who first planned to run in one of the state’s most competitive House districts before pivoting to an unsuccessful bid for secretary of state. Turning Point worked against her in each primary contest.
Both of the group’s favored candidates in those races lost on Tuesday — Jay Feely, a former N.F.L. kicker, for Arizona’s First Congressional District, and Alexander Kolodin, an election-denying lawmaker, for secretary of state.
Ms. Swoboda and other longtime Turning Point opponents could barely contain their schadenfreude this week. She likened the group’s relationship to the Republican Party as akin to “a parasite on a host.”
“It’d be one thing if you were a parasite that could function in a symbiotic way,” Ms. Swoboda said. “But if you’re a tick that keeps sucking on a host until the host is dead, then you’re useless and a negative.”
Some Turning Point critics argue that more moderate candidates would have performed better. Others struggled to think of a Republican who could have withstood the blue tide that swept the country.
“It might be satisfying to me to say Turning Point snatched defeat from jaws of victory,” said Stephen Richer, a Republican and former Maricopa County recorder who lost his 2024 primary to a candidate backed by Turning Point. But, he said, “President Trump owns this loss.”
Still, Mr. Richer said, Turning Point has “missed the message” several cycles in a row.
Mr. Kolvet said those denouncing Turning Point were “irrelevant, disgruntled local political malcontents.”
But even some Republican base voters have grown tired of the combative political environment the group has fostered.
“This whole nonsense about insulting other conservatives because they don’t agree 100 percent with their views is really dumb, and it’s cost us dearly here,” Tom Abood, a real estate developer who has voted for Mr. Trump three times, said after casting his ballot for Republicans on Tuesday in the suburb of Paradise Valley. “It should be an easy slam dunk win in this state.”
On the day after the election, Turning Point staff members arrived early at their office near the foothills of Phoenix’s South Mountain Preserve to take stock.
The shift to Democrats among young men — who had moved sharply right in 2024 — was especially concerning, said Alex Clark, who hosts a health and wellness podcast for Turning Point and was at the office that day.
College-age voters should be the group’s top priority going forward, Ms. Clark said, and Turning Point should invest in more polling on campuses to keep tabs on the constituency before it drifts further left.
“That should be a really sobering reality for the G.O.P., that if you do not work to rebuild trust with these voters by 2028, you will have built a super-Democrat party,” Ms. Clark said.
Mrs. Kirk has already endorsed Vice President JD Vance for president in 2028. But Ms. Clark said Turning Point would be wise not to tie itself too closely to any one president. The group should promote conservative values while remaining neutral in 2028 and beyond, she said.
“The base could turn on a president, conservative or not, at any time,” Ms. Clark said. “You don’t want to be stuck in the middle of that.”
The group’s leaders say they plan to analyze state-level polling, redouble their efforts on college campuses and strategize about how to best allocate their resources ahead of 2028.
Sean Noble, who was Mr. Biggs’s top campaign strategist, saw a silver lining for Turning Point in the sweeping Republican defeat. The group now has a chance to become the leading voice of resistance to new Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill, he said. Mr. Noble compared the moment to the early 1990s, when Rush Limbaugh surged in popularity and became a hero to grass-roots conservatives.
“One of the best things that could have happened for Turning Point,” Mr. Noble said, “is they now have the foil of Democrats in charge of Congress.”
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