What official endorsements has Turning Point USA made by year and candidate?
Executive summary
Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and its political arm Turning Point Action (TPAction) maintain public lists of political endorsements, but reporting and public databases show the organization distributes endorsements through its 501(c) student brand and — more formally — its 501(c) TPAction affiliate, with documented endorsements concentrated in recent federal cycles and a notable slate in 2020 (including support for President Trump and several Republican Senate and House candidates) [1] [2] [3]. Public trackers such as Ballotpedia and InfluenceWatch compile year-by-year endorsement lists, while TPAction’s own site posts current endorsement rollouts, but source material provided here does not contain a complete year-by-year candidate roster for every cycle [1] [2] [4].
1. What counts as an “official” Turning Point endorsement — TPUSA vs. TPAction
Turning Point USA is the parent organization focused on campus work and public messaging, but its explicitly partisan, campaign-oriented endorsements are issued by Turning Point Action, the 501(c) political advocacy arm created to engage directly in elections; Ballotpedia and TPAction separate endorsement listings for the organizations accordingly, and TPAction’s endorsement page is the primary public record for formal political endorsements [1] [2] [4].
2. The documented 2020 slate: Trump plus Senate and House picks
InfluenceWatch’s reporting from the 2020 cycle records that Turning Point Action endorsed President Donald Trump and at least a half-dozen other Republican federal candidates, explicitly naming endorsements for Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler (then-Senate appointees) and multiple House incumbents including Rep. Lance Gooden and Rep. Paul Gosar, as well as Senate candidate Bill Hagerty in Tennessee; several other TPAction picks that cycle (Esther Joy King, Rick McCormick, Tiffany Shade) were also listed as endorsed, per InfluenceWatch’s summary of TPAction’s 2020 endorsements [3].
3. Ongoing endorsement activity and 2024–2025 signals
TPAction’s own website promotes an active roster of endorsed federal candidates across battlegrounds and states (for example, U.S. Senate candidates in Utah, Ohio, North Carolina and others highlighted on its endorsement pages), and TPAction framed intensive voter outreach and “chase the vote” programs in 2024 tied to its endorsement-driven operations, indicating continued formal endorsement activity into the 2024 cycle and beyond [4] [5] [6].
4. Founder and leadership endorsements vs. organizational endorsements
Charlie Kirk, TPUSA’s founder and longtime face of the movement until his death in 2025, publicly endorsed individual candidates outside or in parallel to organizational endorsements — for instance, media coverage notes Kirk’s personal endorsements of Andy Biggs in the Arizona governor contest and Nate Morris in Kentucky — and those personal endorsements are recorded separately from TPAction’s formal endorsement lists [7]. Reporting sources make clear the distinction between Kirk’s personal influence and the institutional endorsement machinery that TPAction runs [7] [2].
5. What public trackers show — and what the available sources do not
Ballotpedia maintains dedicated pages cataloguing endorsements by both Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action, serving as primary public compilations for year-by-year lists, and OpenSecrets provides related spending and recipient data that can corroborate which candidates received organizational support in particular cycles; however, the documents and snippets provided here do not include a complete, enumerated year-by-year candidate roster that can be reproduced verbatim, so researchers should consult Ballotpedia’s “Endorsements by Turning Point USA Inc.” and “Endorsements by Turning Point Action” pages and TPAction’s endorsement page for full, up-to-date lists [1] [2] [4] [8].
Conclusion
The clearest, attributable record of Turning Point’s official political endorsements resides with Turning Point Action’s public endorsements and the Ballotpedia compilations that track them; available reporting confirms a prominent, documented 2020 slate (including President Trump, two Senate appointees and several House and Senate candidates) and shows ongoing endorsement activity through 2024 and into 2025, but a comprehensive year-by-year candidate-by-candidate list requires consulting the Ballotpedia and TPAction endorsement pages directly because the provided sources summarize but do not reproduce every endorsed name for each year [3] [1] [2] [4].