The night before he kicked off his run for Congress, Iowa Republican Joe Mitchell sent a copy of his campaign announcement to his friend and mentor, Charlie Kirk.
“He was fully supportive,’’ said Mitchell, 28, a former state representative who launched his bid for an open House seat in northeastern Iowa on Sept. 8, two days before Kirk, 31, was fatally shot on a Utah college campus.
As the founder of Turning Point USA, Kirk was a conservative firebrand whose skillful use of social media, talk radio and campus visits helped drive more high school and college students to the right during the Trump era. Many of those young conservatives now view his assassination as an inflection point and predict it will propel a new generation toward political activism, including running for office.
