“In 2008 a record amount of young voters came out in droves to campaign and vote for President Obama. Four years later, that support seems to be running dry. So what happened? Joining us now is the founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, and his second-in-command, Miguel Melgar.”
On July 5th, 2012 – 4,796 days before Kirk would be brutally killed by an assassin’s bullet – he appeared on Fox News, where he argued that President Obama had betrayed the countries’ youth.
On September 17th, mourners gathered on Centennial Green, the large lawn in front of Mount Prospect’s Village Hall. Here, they took turns speaking at an open mic – sharing everything from their views on what’s next for the Christian right, to their favorite memories of Charlie Kirk, the incredibly popular right wing political pundit and debater. The name of one of the grieving people who spoke at the small vigil of fifty or sixty people would have been familiar to someone who watched Fox on July 5th, 2012 – the young man described by Fox Host Peter J Johnson Jr. as Kirk’s “second-in-command,” Miguel Melgar.
Melgar is a founding member and former Director of Advancement for Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the behemoth activist organization largely credited with moving the youth vote needle in the Republican, specifically MAGA, direction. He spoke with Kirk the first two times TPUSA appeared on television. He and Kirk even co-moderated the first of the campus debate events that Kirk would eventually become famous for. He and Kirk organized around half a dozen fundraising events for TPUSA at its inception.
A day after the vigil in Mount Prospect, a board meeting for High School District 214 was held one town over, in Arlington Heights – the hometown of Charlie Kirk. The event was ridden of its usual administrative procedures and instead dominated by public comments and emotional speeches about the district honoring Kirk, seeing as he is a graduate of a D214 school: Wheeling High School. Controversial ideas dominated the meeting. One Wheeling Resident, whose statement was met with a smattering of applause, suggested that drastic action was necessary to honor Kirk.
“He deserves to be honored with distinguished status at Wheeling High School, with a district wide day of honor when he receives the medal of freedom, and with a permanent statue and a place of remembrance on the campus of Wheeling High School,” she said.
The level of controversy at the meeting was evident in the live stream views alone: as of the time of writing, the Kirk village board meeting has 602% more views than the second highest viewed 2025-2026 board meeting on the district’s YouTube channel.
Whether it’s Representative Ocasio-Cortez from New York who called Kirk “ignorant” after his death, or Representative Clay Higgins who said he will be pursuing an “immediate ban for life” for anyone who mocked Kirk on social media platforms, national discussions of honoring Kirk’s legacy are dominated by dividing ideas like statues and holidays.
Melgar, Kirk’s co-founder, has a different – more ubiquitous – idea when it comes to Kirk’s legacy.
“What they can… do to really honor his legacy is to continue to prioritize and fund extracurriculars like… speech and debate team, mock trial… model UN,” said Melgar.
“Really do their best to encourage and give a platform to the type of extracurriculars that would have built the same type of skill sets Charlie wanted to see our generation building out.”
Melgar himself is the former Buffalo Grove High School debate coach. His program was eventually shut down due to a lack of students.
“The year I stopped coaching, I only had one returning student,” said Melgar.
Prospect High School Head Debate Coach Adam Levinson doesn’t experience the same issue.
“Participation has been growing each year over the past few years,” said Levinson.
Melgar says that it’s not about what you do to tokenize an assassinated man – people will remember him no matter what.
“We can’t measure [Kirk’s legacy] by the amount of statues or the amount of murals… we have to measure that by how good of a job are you actually doing at engaging your student body?”
Kirk was infamous for saying things and taking positions offensive to trans, LGBTQ, black, and muslim folks. This has been a major argument against honoring Kirk: he spoke hatefully towards groups and communities hundreds of students in District 214 fall under or identify as. Melgar cedes that this is a reasonable position.
“Plenty of things I found unacceptable myself… I can still say that, and still want to honor what he built, even though the things he said didn’t always resonate, said Melgar.
Melgar has other ideas, like a mural at Wheeling High School: not one that solely venerates Kirk, but one that honors the ideas he feels Kirk believed in, like political conversation and free speech. Melgar would like to see a mural painted with Kirk in the middle. On the left, students who disagreed with Kirk could paint what they feel his legacy is. On the right, supporters could paint their vision of his legacy.
“Whether or not you agreed with Charlie’s political activism… he should still be honored for what he did as a community organizer and for what he did to engage people into political conversation,” said Melgar.
While some, specifically attendees of the September 18th village board meeting, present bold and divisive ideas like statues and district-wide days off of school, Kirk’s co-founder and friend has quietly dreamt up a bipartisan way to remember Kirk. A way to honor Kirk that doesn’t anger a huge portion of the country, or involve cracking down or sending troops into cities – a simple way to unite people at a time when Americans feel like we’re more divided than ever.
“There definitely is a very strong appetite among young people to be politically engaged… [Give] them the proper tools and resources necessary so that if they want to become the next Charlie Kirk, they can.”
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