In April, President Donald Trump spoke to a crowd of Turning Point devotees at their “Build a Red Wall” rally held at Phoenix’s Dream City Mega Church.
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“In 2024, Turning Point’s grassroots army helped us win Arizona in an absolute landslide. We won — we won all seven swing states,” Trump said to a roar of applause.
Since then, Turning Point’s outsized influence on Republican electoral politics has soured many conservatives outside the political organization, including Gina Swoboda.
“They are not the reason Trump won. Trump is the reason Trump won,” said Gina Swoboda, former Arizona Republican Party chair and former Republican primary candidate for Arizona Secretary of State.
Since Kirk’s assassination, TPUSA has tens of thousands of new student members and has raised millions of dollars in donations. The organization boasts hundreds of college chapters and thousands of high school chapters nationwide. After Kirk’s assassination, TPUSA-backed candidate Dorean Taylor won a recall election that removed Republican Julie Spilsbury from the Mesa City Council after Spilsbury endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Turning Point-backed candidates’ fortunes in most Arizona general elections tell a different story. In Arizona, TPUSA’s home state, most TPUSA-endorsed candidates lose.
“The problem I have with them is that they lose over and over and over again, and they will lose on Tuesday,” said Swoboda.
TPUSA-backed candidates failed to win a majority of seats in the unusually high-profile Salt River Project Board and Council elections. These elections are usually obscure. SRP elections attract little public attention. Only about 7,500 people voted in the 2024 election. This year, that number was above 37,000.
Turning Point-backed candidates won the SRP president and vice president races, both of which involved incumbents. But it fell short of securing control of either the Board or Council. For the first time, a clean-energy slate won majority control of both governing bodies. Experts blamed voter backlash against TPUSA’s involvement in a low-profile utility election. Turning Point’s involvement transformed a normally quiet municipal contest into a political battle.
Chuck Coughlin, a Republican political strategist in Arizona, said that the war in Iran and rising living costs have fueled resistance to MAGA-aligned organizations.
“[Turning Point] put their logo on [the candidates’] signs. That sparked, in this cycle, a fairly significant backlash in the electorate at large, three to four times larger,” said Coughlin.
Phoenix New Times previously reported that Google withdrew its endorsement of pro-industry candidates after Turning Point endorsed them.
TPUSA’s brand mobilizes its loyal base as much as its critics. In a purple state like Arizona, moderate candidates have stronger odds of winning over independent voters. TPUSA-backed candidates are fiercely ideologically right and are closely aligned with Trump, whose popularity in Arizona is in the negative, according to several polls.
Turning Point is “not wholly different from a significant part of the mega universe,” said Coughlin.
In 2018, Kirk established Turning Point’s headquarters in Phoenix seeking to leverage the organization’s activist base into electoral power. He launched Turning Point Action in 2019, dedicated to electing conservatives across the country.
Moderate Republicans have frequently lost to Turning Point-backed candidates in low-turnout Republican primaries, where ideological voters make up a larger share of the electorate. As Trump’s popularity has declined, TPUSA has remained tied to his political brand.
“The Turning Point brand is toxic,” Swoboda said shortly before the Republican primary elections. Swoboda ran against Alexander Kolodin, a Turning Point-backed candidate, for Arizona Secretary of State. Kolodin claimed that the 2020 election was stolen and sued over the result. The Arizona state bar admonished Kolodin and put him on probation over his lawsuits. Swoboda lost to Kolodin by 18 points. Kolodin’s campaign did not respond to request for comment in time for publication.
Swoboda served as chair of the Arizona Republican Party from 2024 to 2026 before stepping down to run for office. She stated that during her tenure, Turning Point Action—the political arm of TPUSA—wielded significant political influence and money to back its candidates.
They would actually be much easier to tolerate if they could win a [general] race every once in a while,” said Swoboda.
TPUSA can influence primaries, but it has lost recent elections that require speaking to the middle. In 2022, in Arizona’s gubernatorial election, Turning Point-backed candidate Kari Lake lost to Katie Hobbs by less than a one-point margin, by about 17,000 votes.
Lake has been known for abrasive and far-right politics, including a charge that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump. In 2024, Turning Point backed Lake’s Senate campaign. Lake lost to Gallego by 2.4 points, or about 70,000 votes, underperforming in an election where Trump won.
Turning Point-backed candidate Blake Masters lost to Mark Kelly by 5 points in Arizona’s 2022 Senate race. Democrat Kris Mayes beat TPUSA-backed candidate Abe Hamadeh by a mere 280 votes. Democrat Adrian Fontes beat TPUSA-backed Mark Finchem by 4.8 points in a 2022 race for Arizona Secretary of State.
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What Lake, Masters, Hamadeh, and Finchem all have in common, besides losing, is devotion to Turning Point and the MAGA movement. All four candidates questioned the integrity of the 2020 elections. They supported Trump’s unpopular agenda from immigration to economics.
Swoboda recounted instances where she and TPUSA leadership butted heads while she was the Arizona Republican Party chair, as TPUSA wanted more say and sway within the party with goals to shift the party further right.
“They don’t give a shit about ultimately winning the seat. They give a shit about controlling the person who wins the seat. And if you can’t control them, they want to burn them to the ground. That’s the problem,” Swoboda said. “They make more money losing.”
Both Turning Point spokesperson Andrew Kolvet and Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer declined to comment for this article.
Kolvet recently made headlines after calling Bernadette Greene-Placentina rape a “hoax.”
Swoboda continued: “Donors are giving a lot of money to Turning Point Action to increase our majority in the legislature. Turning Point is actually spending money in LD3. LD3 is North Scottsdale. It’s red as red. It’s maroon. Like, why would a donor give you money to spend money in a district that’s totally red? Because they are actually spending money to advocate for [candidates] who will join the Freedom Caucus.”
The Freedom Caucus, based in Congress, and the State Freedom Caucus Network, based in state legislatures, are composed of the furthest-right legislators. The Freedom Caucus and Turning Point Action share overlapping funding, personnel, and goals.
“That, to me, is not a good use of a donor’s money. You should be in LD2, LD4, LD17, Swing districts, right?” said Swoboda. “Look at what happened in Nevada. They went and opened a big headquarters in Nevada. Guess what happened to voter registration? It flipped, Democratic majority, just like what’s happening here, because they’re full of shit.”
Swoboda struggled to gain support for other Arizona Republicans during her run for Secretary of State.
“They are afraid of [Turning Point]. [Arizona Legislatures] don’t donate to me because they are afraid, if their name is on my campaign finance report, that they’ll be hurt by the Freedom Caucus or by Turning Point on their [legislative] bills.”
Republican Rep. David Schweikert made criticisms similar to Swoboda’s during an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix. Schweikert, who ran against Turning Point-backed Rep. Andy Biggs in the Republican gubernatorial primary, said:
“Turning Point could be an amazingly helpful tool for the conservative movement, but they keep recruiting fringe candidates. Other than a recall election, I don’t know of one race Turning Point has won here in Arizona, and now they’ve become a lightning rod of almost rage… You wonder why those of us on the conservative side lose election, lose election, lose election.”
Schweikert lost his race, receiving 14% of the vote; Biggs won with 74%. Since he vacated the seat to run for governor, the open seat has become highly competitive. Jay Feely, backed by Turning Point, won the Republican primary for CD1 and is facing Amish Shah. Shah is leading Feely in several polls.
Feely has aligned himself with Trump and Turning Point. Feely spoke alongside Trump at Turning Point’s “Build the Red Wall” rally in April. He recently praised the president in a Sept. 9 midterm convention speech. Feely’s campaign is unlike most Republican campaigns across other highly competitive races. Recent AdImpact data shows only 1% of Republican campaign ads mention Donald Trump by name.
Democrats are taking advantage of the far-right turn. They hope to court younger voters who were influenced by Turning Point in the 2024 elections.
“Turning Point has only been as powerful as the guy on the top of the ticket they were promoting,” said Stacy Pearson, a communications strategist who has worked on several Democratic campaigns. “What we’re seeing now is young people being disappointed with the economy. And with the cost of college education. And I think Turning Point is going to have a diminished influence with this particular voting bloc.”
Despite Turning Point’s organizational growth following Kirk’s assassination, broader support for MAGA-aligned Republicans among young voters appears to be weakening. A Yale Spring 2026 poll found that 68% of voters ages 18 to 22 and 72% of voters ages 23 to 29 disapproved of Trump’s job performance.
According to Arizona voter registration data, independents account for 34.48% of registered voters, compared with 28.13% for Democrats and 35.54% for Republicans. Winning independent voters is often essential in statewide elections, and younger independents represent an important constituency. That helps explain why Turning Point has invested heavily in college-campus outreach across the country.
With the midterm elections less than a week away, Democrats and Republicans will have their questions answered on Turning Point’s influence on Arizona’s elections.
Recent polling shows Democrats leading in the races for Arizona governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, and superintendent of public instruction. Turning Point backed all the Republican candidates in these races in their primaries, often over more moderate candidates.
“[Turning Point] wants to wear our party like a fucking skin suit,” said Swoboda. “We’re gonna fucking lose, like, nobody has lost, in all the years of losing. And are they gonna own it? Are they gonna own it when their candidates cause us to lose? I can’t wait to find out.”
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