Republican plan would send license plate fees to Turning Point USA to memorialize Charlie Kirk

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk hated when the government sent money to private organizations because it violated free-market economic principles, but legislative Republicans want to memorialize him by creating a license plate in his honor that will direct cash the state collects from Arizona drivers to TPUSA.

The idea is one of several to honor Kirk, who was shot and killed on Sept. 10 while speaking at a university in Utah, including naming a highway after him and authorizing a statue of him across the street from the state Capitol.

The specialty license plate is the brainchild of Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Queen Creek Republican and founder of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, who worked closely with Kirk and whose companies have been paid millions of dollars by TPUSA.

“His passing has been tragic,” Hoffman said during a Feb. 4 Senate Government Committee hearing. “It has been heartbreaking, not just for myself, but for his wife and his kids.”

Hoffman’s Senate Bill 1439 would allow for the creation of special Arizona license plates memorializing Kirk and recognizing TPUSA. For every driver that pays $25 to get the specialty plate, the far-right advocacy group would get $17.

Democrats on the Senate Government Committee expressed their condolences to Hoffman for the death of his friend, but said that specialty plates should not fund political organizations. 

“To me, to use a government program to financially benefit one political organization sets just a troubling precedent, and it risks blurring the lines between state neutrality and political advocacy,” said Sen. Lauren Kuby, D-Tempe.

Hoffman argued that Turning Point USA is not a political organization, but rather a charitable nonprofit “that engages in the promotion of free markets and limited governments and open debate.”

Hoffman is correct that the Internal Revenue Service recognizes TPUSA as a public charity, but anyone familiar with the group knows that it advances right-wing causes and exclusively promotes conservative policies. Its sister organization, Turning Point Action, works to get far-right Republican candidates elected and to register Republican voters. 

And Hoffman is well aware of that, as he has worked closely with TPUSA for more than a decade. 

Hoffman is the president and CEO of consulting and marketing firms Rally Forge and 1Ten. From 2017 through 2019, TPUSA paid Rally Forge a total of more than $1.6 million for advertising, marketing and digital education services, according to publicly available TPUSA tax documents. 

In 2022 and 2023 Turning Point Action, paid 1Ten a total of more than $1 million for social and digital media advertising, according to tax filings. 

When the full Senate took up Hoffman’s bills to memorialize Kirk on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan asked Hoffman: “Do you or one of the companies you own, or are affiliated with — have you received any compensation, financial, or otherwise, from the beneficiary organization for this plate?” 

Hoffman said he had not, which elicited a confused “OK” from Sundareshan. 

Sundareshan later told the Arizona Mirror that she was seeking to confirm that TPUSA had paid any of Hoffman’s businesses. She said she was confused when he said “no” because it’s common knowledge that he has close business ties to TPUSA. 

Hoffman told the Mirror via text message that wasn’t what Sundareshan asked, and he was adamant that his understanding of what she asked was the only possible meaning of the question. 

“During floor debate, I was asked whether I or my company received financial compensation related to this legislation or the specialty license plate,” Hoffman said. “The answer is no. Neither I nor my company received compensation connected to this bill or its passage.” 

Hoffman went on to say that his companies have provided professional services for Turning Point organizations in the past. 

“Those business relationships were not connected in any way to my decision to sponsor or support this measure,” Hoffman said. “Like many legislators with private-sector backgrounds, I have had many professional clients over the course of my career. Legislative decisions are based on policy merits and constituent interests, not prior business relationships.”

Arizona campaign finance reports show that Turning Point Action paid 1Ten more than $450,000 for services last year, through at least October 2025. 

Sundareshan told the Mirror that her biggest concern with the license plate bill was “whether a senator sponsored legislation that would directly enrich themselves.” 

Kirk himself advocated against well-funded private organizations taking money from the government. 

During his April 15, 2025, podcast, Kirk explicitly called for ending taxpayer funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, and his guest Russ Vought described those organizations as vehicles for “leftist indoctrination.” 

“Why can’t NPR just go raise money from all their donors?” Kirk asked. 

In the same podcast, Kirk said that Harvard University was a well-funded private institution with its own wealthy donor base, which should not receive government money. Days earlier, the Trump administration had sent a letter to Harvard demanding sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions, ostensibly to curb antisemitism. The day that Harvard rejected those demands, the administration froze $2.2 billion in research grants to the university.

And TPUSA’s messaging has often derided government spending on private organizations because it meant that taxpayers were being compelled to subsidize causes they oppose — and doing so is corrupt and antithetical to free markets.

In the wake of Kirk’s death, one conservative writer pointed out that the Trump administration’s moves to partner with TPUSA and other far-right advocacy groups — and pay them — to launch civics education campaigns ran counter to Kirk’s legacy.

“If the Harris-Walz administration had just announced a 250th coalition featuring a formal partnership between the department and the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, Center for American Progress, Harvard, et al., Republicans would have been (rightfully!) up in arms,” Frederick M. Hess wrote for the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “We’d hear about Big Government using taxpayer funds to promote ideological allies, be reminded that no one should take such a transparently one-sided lineup seriously, and be told that this will do more to sow division than understanding.”

TPUSA — which Kirk described as an organization dedicated to winning “America’s culture war” — brought in $84 million in 2024, while Turning Point Action brought in more than $27 million. 

Just last week, Hoffman took to social media to criticize former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who was constantly attacked by his own party for discounting false claims of election fraud in 2020 and 2022. 

“Richer said the quiet part out loud: He used his ‘public service’ to grow his personal wealth,” Hoffman wrote. “He was a total failure as Recorder, but leveraged his position to cozy up to the Never Trump establishment & the radical Left for personal gain.” 

On Wednesday, Hoffman praised Kirk, saying that his legacy will not be partisanship but Christian faith. 

“What Charlie knew is that the only way that we actually get back to a productive political dialogue in this country is having conversations with each other, not yelling at each other,” Hoffman said. 

Kirk traveled to college campuses, often inviting students who disagreed with him to debate. Hoffman praised Kirk for often quieting the mostly conservative crowds that attended to allow left-leaning students to speak. But those that Kirk debated did not always feel that he argued in good faith. 

And Hoffman is hardly a beacon of collegiality. In a 2024 social media post, he called Republicans who backed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump “whores.” Last year, he accused his fellow GOP legislators of allowing Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs to “take a dump” on his budget proposal. 

“A license plate for my dear friend doesn’t seem nearly enough,” Hoffman said, adding that other legislative tributes would help. 

On Wednesday, along party lines, the Senate voted to pass both SB1439 and Senate Bill 1010, sponsored by Senate President Warren Petersen, which would rename Loop 202 the “Charlie Kirk Loop 202.” 

Hoffman also sponsored Senate Bill 1686 which would allow a privately-funded statue of Kirk to be erected at Wesley Bolin Plaza, across from the Capitol.

***CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story and headline asserted that the legislative proposal to create a specialty license plate for Turning Point USA would direct “taxpayer dollars” to the 501(c)3 Phoenix-based organization. However, the Arizona Department of Transportation explicitly says that the money that is given to private organizations from the sale of any of the state’s dozens of specialty plates come “directly from customer sales and is not funded by taxpayer dollars.” The story and headline have been updated to reflect that.