New Mexico leaders react to the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk

OREM, Utah — Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump, died Wednesday after being shot at an event at Utah Valley University, Trump said.

The co-founder and CEO of the youth organization Turning Point USA, the 31-year-old Kirk is the latest victim in a spasm of political violence across the United States. In New Mexico, just last month, failed GOP candidate Solomon Peña was sentenced to 80 years for shooting up the homes of his political rivals.

Kirk had been speaking at a “Prove Me Wrong” debate hosted by his nonprofit political organization, part of the launch of his “American Comeback” tour of college campuses. Immediately before the shooting, Kirk had been taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence.

“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience member asked. Kirk responded: “Too many.”

The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.

Then a single shot rang out.

Political violence has been increasing in America in recent years as the discourse has degenerated. From failed assassination attempts of politicians such as former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords and then-candidate Trump on the campaign trail last year to attacks on those close to politicians like former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, in their San Francisco home, all too often violent rhetoric and frustration are boiling over into physical attacks.

Bipartisan outrage

New Mexico leaders across the political spectrum decried Kirk’s slaying Wednesday.

Senate Minority Leader William Sharer, R-Farmington, said Kirk was “executed” by people who believe free speech is an “existential threat to our democracy.”

“Yet our republic cannot function without healthy political debate,” Sharer said in a statement. “Shame on those who can’t — or won’t — engage in a civil conversation and instead resort to violence to silence the voices of those they disagree with.”

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Kirk’s shooting was “tragic and grossly un-American,” and said that while people can disagree on political beliefs, violence is not the answer.

The Republican Party of New Mexico posted a photo of its booth located at the New Mexico State Fair and asked attendees to write a message to the Kirk family on a dry-erase board. Kirk, they said, was a leader who “inspired countless young Americans to stand boldly for God and country.”

“Charlie’s assassination was not just an attack on him, but on the very principles of free speech and civil discourse,” New Mexico GOP Chairwoman Amy Barela said in a statement. “It was an act of cowardice, meant to silence a voice that could not be silenced. Let us honor his memory not by falling deeper into division, but by choosing to reach across the aisle.”

Other New Mexico leaders, including Attorney General Raúl Torrez and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, expressed well-wishes for Kirk’s family.

“The killing of Charlie Kirk was reprehensible, and it should be condemned by every American,” Torrez said in a statement. “Our democracy demands that we unite against our nation’s rising tide of political violence.”

U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., said it was “heartbreaking” to hear the news out of Utah and Evergreen, Colorado, where a school shooting Wednesday left several students critically injured.

Controversial college campuses

The Southwest was home for Kirk, who based Turning Point in Phoenix. By Friday evening, flowers and makeshift memorials wreathed the office. But more home for Kirk were college campuses.

An unabashed Christian conservative who often made provocative statements about gender, race and politics, Kirk co-founded Turning Point in 2012 at the age of 18, targeting younger people and venturing onto liberal-leaning college campuses where many GOP activists were nervous to tread. But Kirk loved debating liberals and driving conservatism into what he viewed as the heart of the liberal left — something he died doing.

Turning Point was not an immediate success. But Kirk’s zeal for confronting liberals in academia eventually won over an influential set of conservative financiers, and eventually found a spiritual home with the Trump campaign.

Despite early misgivings, Turning Point enthusiastically backed Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016. Kirk served as a personal aide to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, during the general election campaign.

Soon, Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.

In a lengthy social media post Wednesday, Trump Jr. said Kirk wasn’t just a friend, but was “like a little brother to me” and a “true inspiration.”

Kirk was widely credited as one of the influencers who helped turn a large portion of the youth vote to Trump in the 2024 election. Turning Point’s political wing helped run get-out-the-vote efforts, trying to energize disaffected conservatives who rarely vote. Trump won Arizona by 5 percentage points after narrowly losing it in 2020. The group is known for its events that often feature strobe lighting and pyrotechnics. It claims more than 250,000 student members.

Trump Jr. said Wednesday Kirk “changed the direction of this nation” because “there is no question that Charlie’s work and his voice helped my father win the presidency.”

Kirk visited Albuquerque in early August and spoke on a plethora of issues ranging from immigration and Christianity to Native American property rights and crime at an event hosted by Legacy Church’s Central Campus. The conservative activist was welcomed into the city with a mix of praise from supporters and disapproval from protesters.

Kirk was met with a similar mixture of divided opinions on campus at Utah Valley University this week. An online petition calling for university administrators to bar Kirk from appearing received nearly 1,000 signatures. The university issued a statement last week citing First Amendment rights and affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry, and constructive dialogue.” Some 3,000 people attended Wednesday’s event, and though there were no metal detectors, Kirk had plain-clothed security and at least six police officers were present.

Last week, Kirk posted on X images of news clips showing his visit to Utah colleges was sparking controversy. He wrote, “What’s going on in Utah?”

The latest

It wasn’t immediately clear whether anyone remained in custody or if the shooter was still at large as law enforcement provided evolving and difficult-to-reconcile information.

FBI Director Kash Patel, who earlier in the day posted on social media that a “subject” had been taken into custody, later wrote that the person had been released after being questioned.

Utah authorities had separately said a person of interest was in custody, but it wasn’t immediately clear if that was the same person Patel referenced as having been released.

The FBI also put out a public appeal for information relating to the shooter.

The author of several books, including one on the Second Amendment, Kirk was a staunch supporter of gun rights.

“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” Kirk said during a Turning Point event in Salt Lake City in 2023, adding that gun deaths can be reduced but will never go away.

Tragically, Kirk has now become one of those gun deaths. He was married to podcaster Erika Frantzve. They have two young children.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.