“We’ve seen this with the Federalist Society”: Turning Point’s effort to “infiltrate state capitols”

Turning Point USA is pushing to transform itself from a right-wing campus activism organization into an incubator for Republican candidates, with a slate of Turning Point-affiliated candidates seeking public office in the 2024 elections.

In Michigan’s 27th state House District, Rylee Linting, the youth vice chair of the state GOP, is running in the hopes of flipping a seat in the state’s narrowly divided legislature. If successful, her run could help break the Democratic trifecta in the state, where Democrats currently enjoy a 56-54 seat majority in the House. There’s a decent chance of her winning too — in 2022, Democratic state Rep. Jamie Churches won the seat by just a single percentage point.

From a bird’s eye view, Linting’s candidacy cleaves to many patterns typical of the modern GOP. She decries “the woke student culture” at Michigan’s universities, criticizes “globalist” institutions like the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum, attacks “mass vaccination mandates,” engages in anti-trans rhetoric and has described Project 2025 as something “I think most Republicans would support.”

There is something notable about Linting’s candidacy, however. She is just 22 years old and has a background as a professional activist at Turning Point Action, the 501(c)(4) — often called a “dark money” group — associated with activist Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. And, she’s not alone: Rylee is one of a crop of Turning Point-affiliated candidates seeking elected office this year.

In Michigan, Linting is one of two candidates with ties to the conservative organization who ran this year. The other is one-time state House candidate Miguel Pilar, who withdrew his candidacy before the deadline for Michigan’s 83rd House District and now works with the Linting campaign and for Turning Point. Jack Eubanks also ran for state House in 2022 before losing and becoming a staffer at Turning Point.

The other focus of the group’s efforts have been in Arizona, where they invested heavily in trying to get failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and failed Senate candidate Blake Masters elected to the Senate in 2022.

A senior director of Turning Point Action, Austin Smith, had successfully won election to Arizona’s state House, but resigned from the organization and ended his re-election campaign after he was accused of forging signatures on his nominating petition. The chief financial officer of Turning Point USA, Justin Olson, is also running for election in Arizona’s 10th state House District this year.

By far the most successful of Turning Point’s candidates is Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who served as Turning Point USA’s director of Spanish engagement beginning in 2018. She ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2020 before winning her 2022 race with former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.  

At a glance, the Turning Point candidates stand out from your average Republican. Smith, for example, touts that he was the youngest Republican elected to the Arizona State Legislature, and Linting leans on her youth to contrast herself from a typical nominee. She often tells a story of leaving Grand Valley State University because of its vaccination policy and campus culture and, based on her Facebook profile, it appears she has since enrolled at the conservative Liberty University.

Behind the aesthetics of youth, however, Turning Point candidates are among the most conservative Republicans. Smith was one of the Arizona Republicans who voted to keep the state’s 1864 abortion ban in place earlier this year. Luna co-sponsored legislation introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green R-Ga., to impeach a slate of Biden Cabinet officials.

Democratic Michigan state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, who represents a district that overlaps with the suburban Detroit district where Linting is running, said in an interview that the strong focus on cultural conservatism demonstrates that Linting is a “really strange” decision in a race to represent a downriver community. 

“We have crumbling infrastructure. We need to continue to support our police officers and our firefighters. We need to continue to invest in jobs on the Detroit waterfront,” Camilleri said. “The other thing that’s really fascinating about her campaign is that she’s running as a staunch anti-abortion candidate when regular voters downriver are pro-choice.”

Camilleri said that strategically it makes sense for Turning Point to focus on Michigan, because of the state’s low barrier to running for office, and because “they have seen that Michigan is the laboratory for what can happen in the rest of the nation.” He pointed to the storming of the Michigan capitol in 2020 and the armed protests that followed as a precursor to the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6 as an example.

“They are finding candidates that have zero qualifications but are willing to parrot right-wing talking points and are using them to infiltrate state capitols,” Camilleri said. “We’ve got to do all that we can to stop them because if they find success here in Michigan they’re going to take it all over the nation.”

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Protest movements have often been a proving ground for future elected officials, according to Jonathan Hanson, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. He pointed to the late Rep. John Lewis D-Ga., as an example. Lewis led student movements and was a civil rights organizer in the 1960s before running for office in 1977 and eventually getting elected to Congress in 1986. More recent examples of activist movements producing future politicians include the Tea Party movement in the 2010s and the March for Our Lives movement, where Rep. Max Frost D-Fla., worked as an organizer before running for Congress.

Hanson also pointed to the 27th District in Michigan as an opportunity for Turning Point to claim credit for flipping a vulnerable seat — and potentially control of the state House. 

According to Camilleri, the race is also a chance for Republicans to show that they “can cater to young voters too,” despite the fact that voters under 30 overwhelmingly support Democrats. Turning Point is only a part of this operation for conservatives. Groups like Run GenZ are dedicated to promoting young conservatives in bids for public office. In Camilleri’s opinion, this is the beginning of a push that mirrors other right-wing movements to capture public institutions.

“We’ve seen this with the Federalist Society where they are trying to push their right-wing judges from the local level to the Supreme Court. This is their attempt to do that with the candidate pipeline,” Camilleri said. “They were successful with the Supreme Court, we need to make sure they’re not successful with candidates in the political system.”

Linting’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.