With less than two weeks to go before the July 21 primary election, the tension brewing within the Republican Party is on high — and it boiled over on Monday night when Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of influential right-wing organization Turning Point USA, went on a Twitter rampage against two GOP lawmakers.
The episode featured naked racism, a hilarious acknowledgment of inconsistency by a Turning Point-endorsed lawmaker and a petulant un-endorsement.
And it all begs the question: What is going on at Turning Point?
Is there an actual strategy guiding the organization? Or is Bowyer just obsessed with making enemies and being the tough guy?
The targets of his frenzy were Reps. Quang Nguyen and Nick Kupper, both of whom are Republicans representing rural Arizona districts1 in western and northern Arizona — and they’re far from moderate.
“I mean, these aren’t RINOs,” Republican political strategist Tyler Montague said. “These are, like, hardcore conservative guys.”
The whole debacle began when Bowyer responded to a GOP House candidate’s tweet touting Nguyen’s endorsement.
“Quang has one of the worst scores in the state leg,” Bowyer tweeted, referencing Turning Point’s scorecard system that tracks how often legislators vote in line with the organization’s stances.
Nguyen’s response was a testy counterpunch. But Bowyer’s comeback (which came three-and-a-half hours later) was a racist, dog-whistle gut shot.
Kupper also chimed in about the Turning Point scorecard, noting that he and the Prescott lawmaker actually have similar scores, yet Turning Point Action endorsed Kupper.
“I think the implication was, ‘Hey, there‘s a little racism here, which fits their white nationalist profile.’ And it’s totally true,” Montague said of Kupper’s unsolicited comment on the scorecard system. “They (Turning Point) benefit by agitating and keeping people upset, and then trying to harness that. And so they‘ve opened up a franchise in white nationalism, Christian nationalism, anti-LGBT, election denialism, right?”
Kupper didn’t respond to a request for comment yesterday — presumably because, as he tweeted, his daughter was entering surgery.
Turning Point’s endorsement of Kupper didn’t hold for long.
For calling out the organization’s inconsistency, Kupper earned himself a threat of a primary challenge next cycle, since it’s too late for a candidate to enter the ring this year.
The message was clear: Step out of line, and you’re an enemy.
The organization has done what plenty of others have with scorecard systems: track politicians’ votes. But there’s something different about Turning Point’s scorecard and its role as the purist orthodoxy sect of the right.
Nguyen said he’s been a target of the organization for the past four years, mainly because he doesn’t “bend over, take their phone calls or respond to the scorecard.”
Nguyen also summed up his stance on the organization with one of the finest quotes we’ve had the pleasure of writing down in recent memory:
“I’m very far-right — I’m just not far-stupid.”
Turning Point doesn’t even seem to be basing its endorsements and decision-making purely on ideology, either, as most political organizations do.
Some of Turning Point’s strategic decisions — like not endorsing conservative Senate President Warren Petersen in the GOP primary for Attorney General — are puzzling.
“In the backroom fights, they‘ve alienated people, and it‘s not just RINOs that they‘ve alienated — they‘ve alienated solid conservatives,” Montague said, noting a rift between Petersen and the organization. “They were depicting (Petersen) as a sellout or not a pure, good conservative just because he was doing what he had to do to pass the budget. Petersen took on a leadership role in the Senate and you‘ve got a Democratic governor, right? So to get things through, you have to make some compromises.”
Neither Petersen nor his campaign consultant Ryan O’Daniel responded to our inquiries about not garnering an endorsement from the organization.
Turning Point also didn’t respond to our many questions about its strategy, the Bowyer tweets and not endorsing Petersen.
Nguyen, whose family fled Saigon when he was 13 after the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong took control of South Vietnam, likened Bowyer’s intimidatory style of politics to the authoritarian party bosses of communist rule — which, it’s fair to say, he has some familiarity with.
“In a communist society, you have organizations demand that you have to vote a certain way — it’s not recommendations, that’s different,” Nguyen said. “I’m not against Turning Point or anything. I believe the United States has a beautiful way of working — it allows many voices to speak. But it should not allow one voice to intimidate another, and that’s exactly what (Bowyer) was doing. And he’s been doing it effectively, because a lot of legislators will bend over or be intimidated.”
After its early support of President Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries, the far-right MAGA organization did indeed grow to become a formidable force in Republican politics — especially in Arizona.
That was due in large part to Charlie Kirk, Turning Point’s co-founder, whose high-profile assassination in September left the organization without a charismatic leader.
But some think Turning Point’s power over the party line is in decline after the organization poured money and resources into supporting right-wing candidates in the board elections for the Salt River Project, a public utility.
“I don‘t think their brand‘s all that shiny,” Montague said. “Through some sort of hubris, they decided to co-brand all of those SRP candidates with them. I think they were thinking, ‘Hey, we‘re so popular right now, let‘s do that.’ I think they misinterpreted it. I mean, they spent an enormous amount — I hear between half a million and a million.”
While some of the candidates with Turning Point support emerged victorious, it was a resounding loss for the organization. The slate of clean energy candidates flipped two seats on the power district board, handing sustainability supporters a majority on the board for the first time.
And while the group did help turn out votes for Trump in 2024, it’s possible that the president was a strong enough candidate on his own. When Trump wasn’t on the ballot in 2022, the group’s track record of steadfast support for far-right statewide candidates — like Kari Lake, Mark Finchem and Abe Hamadeh — delivered unimpressive results. All those candidates lost in a year that was supposed to deliver a “red wave” for the GOP, Democratic strategist Adam Kinsey noted.
He even pointed out that Republicans currently have a registration advantage of 375,000 voters over Democrats and should be dominating most elections.
“I say it flippantly that no one’s getting more Democrats elected than Turning Point. It’s not far from the truth,” Kinsey said. “I think they represent a type of politics that most voters in Arizona — certainly the moderate middle, which is the overwhelming majority in Arizona — reject wholeheartedly.”
Things might not be so great within the organization either.
Robert Wallace — who is challenging Republican Sen. John Kavanagh in the Legislative District 3 GOP primary — said he worked for Turning Point until a few weeks ago, when he was fired for refusing to drop out of the race.
He indicated that there are plenty of disgruntled people still inside the organization, along with others who have left — including former GOP Sen. Justine Wadsack, who declined to talk about her experience with Turning Point or why she left.
“It‘s a grassroots organization that, I mean, started that way, but now it really feels like a cult,” Wallace said. “They let me down quite a bit. ... I‘ll tell you one thing, I don‘t even think Charlie, if he rose from the dead, would be able to get a job there.”
Wallace said he joined the organization as a ballot chase manager last July, about the same time he filed his statement of interest to run.
He said he met with Bowyer, who tried to get him to fold his campaign over concerns that Wallace, if he were to win the primary and lose in the general election, could cause Republicans to lose their majority in the Senate.
Bowyer and Turning Point’s effort to get Wallace to drop out might be related to the reasons Kavanagh started calling him “Weird Wallace” and made a website using of the moniker.
Kavanagh is hammering Wallace for his interest in occultism, claims of traveling to alternate dimensions and experiencing “hallucinations of Teletubbies & lizard-like beings,” and talking about “spirits who actually derive a sense of joy from a person spending an abnormally long time sitting on the toilet.”
And that isn’t all.
As for the Twitter scuffle between Bowyer, Nguyen and Kupper, Kinsey suggested that the Turning Point ship might be rudderless and adrift.
“This is one of the first times that we have seen a fight like this sort of spilling out into the public, and I wonder if it’s a sign of things to come,” he said. “Maybe Republicans are getting tired of letting (Bowyer) and Turning Point run their party into the ground.”
While Turning Point, with its solid funding and ground game, won’t disappear overnight, Montague thinks its star is falling.
“I don‘t think they go away,” he said. “I just think that they diminish over time.”
Once bitten, twice shy: Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego had to withdraw his endorsement for the second time this year, the New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports. First, Gallego had to hold an awkward press conference after several women accused his close friend and old roommate, former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, of sexual misconduct. That time, Gallego tried to back up his friend, at least for a few days. But this time, Gallego swiftly pulled his endorsement after a woman accused Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, of sexually assaulting her. Gallego called the accusation “troubling and deeply serious.” Platner says he is “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward,” Stephanie Murray reports for the Republic.
Sticking with him: Former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is getting a boost from a libertarian group, despite facing accusations that he threatened to sic state troopers on a woman if she revealed any of the sexts he sent her, making a racist joke about Black people being lazy and essentially moving to Tennessee while he campaigns for an office in Arizona, per the Republic’s Laura Gersony and Robert Anglen. The Club for Growth spent $250,000 on TV ads to help Lamb’s campaign for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District. The new ads focus on President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Lamb for being a border hawk.
Missing deadlines: Three congressional candidates didn’t file their campaign finance reports on time, per KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez. Democratic candidates Rick McCartney of the 1st Congressional District and Kai Newkirk of the 4th Congressional District both failed to submit. Same with Republican Daniel Keenan, who‘s running against Lamb in the 5th Congressional District. If they don’t file within the grace period of 30 days after the deadline, they’ll face a whopping fine of $200.
What a coinkydink: The City of Phoenix concealed the results of a survey that showed 70% of respondents weren’t fans of a city ordinance that makes it harder to help unsheltered people in parks, the New Times’ Clarissa Sosin reports. The widespread opposition was even more remarkable since the survey was designed to nudge participants into showing support.
Unlike the City of Phoenix, the Agenda doesn’t bury the lead about what Arizona wants.
He doesn’t have receipts: Scottsdale Councilman Barry Graham has been claiming Axon is behind an effort to derail his bid for a second term, but new campaign finance reports don’t show any money coming from Axon or its executives, J. Graber reports for the Scottsdale Independent. Instead, all the money behind the Better Together PAC that targeted Graham comes from Virginia-based National Horizon, Inc, which generally supports conservative causes. Graham’s running mate, former Councilman Bob Littlefield, isn’t convinced and says he’s “pretty sure stuff is still coming from Axon.”
Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego is in an uncomfortably familiar spot as another one of his political allies goes down in flames.
But he’s taking a new tack in the wake of the Graham Platner scandal.
Instead of falling back on his heels like he did when his buddy Eric Swalwell resigned in disgrace, Gallego is giving as good as he gets when GOP officials make fun of him for picking such awful people to endorse.
1 While Kupper lives in Surprise, that’s the eastern edge of his district, which stretches all the way to the border with California.