Charlie Kirk influenced Wyoming politics. A local GOP megadonor helped launch his career.

When Charlie Kirk was a teenager, he had a chance encounter with Foster Friess, the late Wyoming businessman and Republican megadonor. 

They met in Tampa, Florida, at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Months before, Kirk had formed a new organization to recruit and organize young conservatives on college campuses, naming it Turning Point USA. 

In Tampa, Kirk spotted a man in a cowboy hat at the convention and recognized him as Friess, the New York Times reported earlier this year. 

“I ran into him in a stairwell,” Kirk posted on X in November. “A literal elevator pitch when I was 19.” 

The pitch worked. After the encounter, Friess wrote Kirk’s organization its first $10,000 check. 

Before Friess’ death in 2021, the two men and their families developed a friendship that would help launch Kirk’s career into the conservative stratosphere. At 31, Kirk was among the most influential young Republicans in the United States.

“Foster knew then that Charlie would move the culture and change history… and he did!” Lynn Friess, Foster’s widow, said in a statement posted on X. 

“He’s gone to be with the Lord. We are devastated by this news,” she wrote. 

By the time Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem on Wednesday, he 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 to President Donald Trump. 

He’d also helped to set the course for several of Wyoming’s most powerful political leaders. 

“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 wrote. “This act of political violence is a wound to our nation, and we must stand united against such hatred. Let us honor Charlie’s memory by fostering respectful dialogue over division, and peace over violence.”

Other Wyoming officials echoed Biteman in their own statements, including Gov. Mark Gordon, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder and Speaker of the House Chip Neiman. 

Additionally, the Wyoming Republican Party called for civil discourse and the Wyoming Democratic Party denounced political violence. 

“In the midst of this tragedy, it is important that we reaffirm the right of all to express their views freely, especially on college campuses, as Mr. Kirk did recently at UW,” University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel said in a statement. 

In April, Kirk spoke on campus after UW’s Turning Point USA student chapter invited him. 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 could grow unruly — as Wyoming U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s town hall in Laramie did the month prior — no such disruptions occurred. 

It was Kirk’s first time speaking on UW’s campus, but not his first visit to Wyoming. 

In 2020, he addressed Republicans at their convention in Gillette, warning them the state could soon be run by Democrats if conservatives didn’t go on the offensive. 

That same year, Kirk got involved in Teton County’s local elections via attack ads, which were unusual for the community at the time. The three candidates endorsed in the mailers also condemned them. 

In 2023, he visited Teton County for the local GOP’s annual fundraiser. A few months later, Kirk weighed in on one of Wyoming’s more high-profile court cases in recent memory. 

After a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against a UW sorority for admitting a transgender woman, Kirk said the student should be imprisoned and he encouraged members of Kappa Kappa Gamma to harass her. 

“These girls should bully this freak,” he said on the Aug. 29, 2023 episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, a popular podcast. 

Not far from the sorority house, a group of about 100 students gathered on campus Wednesday evening to mourn Kirk. They stood together and prayed, some crying, others embracing one another. 

“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 said. 

Last December, Saint was awarded Turning Point USA’s student patriot of the year award in Phoenix. 

“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 said at the awards event. 

Kirk credited Saint’s leadership with influencing the Wyoming Legislature’s decision to defund diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the university. 

“The sad thing is, like, Charlie, was he hardcore in a lot of his beliefs? Absolutely,” Saint told WyoFile. “But he did it the democratic way by having discourse. And he was shot for doing it the democratic way.” 

While Saint may be responsible for Turning Point’s growing popularity on UW’s campus, it was another student who started the chapter in 2017. 

“At the time, I did not realize how much starting that chapter would shape the rest of my life,” Jessie Rubino said in a statement sent to WyoFile. 

As the Wyoming state director for the State Freedom Caucus Network, it’s Rubino’s job to read and analyze legislation to then guide Wyoming Freedom Caucus members on how they should vote. In 2024, the group won control of the House — the first time a state freedom caucus controlled a legislative chamber in the U.S. 

That work and 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 who would become her husband, Joe, “through campus activism (and the Lord’s good hand),” she wrote. Joe Rubino is now a top official in the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office.

“I became connected with the most amazing patriots in Wyoming and across the nation. There are thousands of other people just like me who 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.”

Zach Agee contributed reporting.