When Charlie Kirk was a teenager, he had a chance encounter with the late Wyoming businessman and Republican megadonor, Foster Friess.
They met in Tampa, Florida, during the 2012 Republican National Convention. Months before, Kirk founded Turning Point USA, a new organization aimed at recruiting and organizing young conservatives on college campuses.
Kirk recognized Friess when he saw him in a cowboy hat at the convention in Tampa earlier this year, according to the New York Times.
“I ran into him in a stairwell,” Kirk wrote on X in November. “A literal elevator pitch when I was 19.”
The pitch worked. Following the encounter, Friess issued Kirk’s organization its first $10,000 check.
Before Friess died in 2021, the two men and their families formed a friendship that would propel Kirk’s career into the conservative stratosphere. Kirk, 31, was one of the most influential young Republicans in the United States.
“Foster knew then that Charlie would move the culture and change history… and he did!” Foster’s widow, Lynn Friess, said in a statement posted to X.
“He has gone to be with the Lord.” “We are devastated by the news,” she wrote.
Kirk had built one of the most high-profile conservative brands in the country, amassed a social media following in the millions, and become a trusted ally of President Donald Trump when he was shot and killed on Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem.
He’d also helped to pave the way for some of Wyoming’s most powerful political figures.
“I’ve known Charlie since before his rise to prominence—a salt-of-the-earth man with a beautiful family, driven by an unwavering commitment to his beliefs,” Wyoming Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, said in a statement.
“My heart aches for his loved ones, his wife and two beautiful children, and my prayers are with them during this unimaginable loss,” Biteman posted on Twitter. “This act of political violence is a wound to our country, and we must all stand together against such hatred. Let us honor Charlie’s memory by emphasizing respectful dialogue over division and peace over violence.
Other Wyoming officials, including Gov. Mark Gordon, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, and House Speaker Chip Neiman, echoed Biteman’s statement.
Additionally, the Wyoming Republican Party advocated for civil discourse, while the Wyoming Democratic Party condemned political violence.
“In the midst of this tragedy, it is important that we reaffirm everyone’s right to freely express themselves, especially on college campuses, as Mr. Kirk did recently at UW,” University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel said in a statement.
Kirk spoke on campus in April at the invitation of the University of Washington’s Turning Point USA student chapter. The event sold out, and Kirk spent the majority of his time on stage debating students, according to The Laramie Reporter. And, despite concerns that Kirk’s visit would become unruly, as Wyoming U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s town hall in Laramie had the month before, no such disruptions occurred.
Kirk spoke for the first time on the UW campus, but he had previously visited Wyoming.
In 2020, he spoke at the Republican convention in Gillette, warning that if conservatives did not go on the offensive, the state would soon be run by Democrats.
That same year, Kirk participated in Teton County’s local elections by running attack ads, which was unusual for the community at the time. The three candidates supported by the mailers also condemned them.
In 2023, he went to Teton County for the local GOP’s annual fundraiser. A few months later, Kirk spoke out on one of Wyoming’s most high-profile court cases in recent history.
After a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against a UW sorority for admitting a transgender woman, Kirk suggested the student be imprisoned and encouraged Kappa Kappa Gamma members to harass her.
“These girls should bully this freak,” he said on the popular podcast The Charlie Kirk Show, which aired on August 29, 2023.
On Wednesday evening, about 100 students gathered on campus near the sorority house to mourn Kirk. They stood together and prayed, with some crying and others embracing.
“I met [Kirk] like three years ago, and I was really struggling running this thing because people just didn’t like Turning Point all that much,” Gabe Saint, president of the organization’s UW chapter, told WyoFile at the vigil.
“And now we’re way more popular, and it’s because of a lot of the stuff Charlie’s done, and how he’s supported us,” Saint laughed.
Saint received the Turning Point USA student patriot of the year award in Phoenix last December.
“Spotting an inactive TP USA chapter on campus, [Saint] single-handedly revived it, transforming a four-member club into a powerhouse organization, hosting record-breaking events and reshaping university policy,” Kirk explained during the awards ceremony.
Kirk credited Saint’s leadership with influencing the Wyoming Legislature’s decision to cut funding for the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
“The sad thing is, Charlie, was he adamant about a lot of his beliefs? “Yes,” Saint told WyoFile. “But he did it in a democratic way by engaging in discourse. And he was shot for doing it democratically.”
While Saint may be responsible for Turning Point’s growing popularity on the UW campus, another student founded the chapter in 2017.
“At the time, I had no idea how much starting that chapter would shape the rest of my life,” Jessie Rubino said in a statement sent to WyoFile.
Rubino, the Wyoming state director for the State Freedom Caucus Network, is responsible for reading and analyzing legislation in order to advise Wyoming Freedom Caucus members on how to vote. In 2024, the group took control of the House, marking the first time a state freedom caucus had control of a legislative chamber in the United States.
That work, like so much of Rubino’s life, “can be traced back to the small group of conservatives who met Thursday nights in the student union in Laramie—all thanks to Charlie,” she wrote.
She met her closest friends and the man she would marry, Joe, “through campus activism (and the Lord’s good hand),” she wrote. Joe Rubino is now a senior official in the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office.
“I became acquainted with some of the most incredible patriots in Wyoming and across the country. “Thousands of other people, including myself, have been blessed by Charlie’s work,” Jessie Rubino wrote. “I am sickened and saddened, but assured that Charlie is in paradise with the Lord today.”
