The tragic death of Charlie Kirk cannot help but resound among all who knew him, all who knew of him, and even those who first heard of Charlie Kirk while watching nonstop coverage of his tragic death.
I never met Charlie – unless we met in passing while we were both working with the Tea Party Express shortly after Obama’s election.
They were a client of mine – I worked with the news media, helping them promote their events. I also staffed events, doing whatever was needed to help generate effective news coverage.
As their senior marketing guy, they sent me to CPAC a few months after a hugely successful event in rural Searchlight, Nevada, the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown. I could well have met him at CPAC, more than a decade ago. I’d like to think we did.
I attended one other CPAC event four years later, working for the organization that sponsored and hosted each year’s CPAC event. I may have run into him there as well, as one of my assignments was to schmooze with the media on Radio Row, and to talk to vendors in the trade show room about CPAC’s newest information product. He was probably there, too, along with 10,000 other people. Trump came and that ensured CPAC was sold out.
Otherwise, I’m pretty sure we never met.
For years, though, I followed his actions in reaching out to college students – especially dyed-in-the-wool brainwashed liberals who’d show up to mock him. At least in some cases, they’d come away “converted” to Charlie’s brand of honest discussion based on his seemingly infinite host of fact and figures. I never saw – nor even heard of – any anti-conservative student who confounded him with his or her question and command of facts.
Charlie must have had a photographic memory, or the next best thing. He had to have spent more time than a college honors student does cramming for exams, just to have been exposed to the range of facts he kept forever after at his fingertips. He was always ready to quote “chapter and verse” on any rebuttal to a liberal challenge.
Charlie Kirk was a remarkable man. I wish I’d met him beyond just in passing – better still, I wish I’d been able to work with him personally.
He reminds me of a couple of things.
First, I was an early believer in the conservative cause. As early as 1964 – around the time I turned 13 – I found myself, supporting the election of Barry Goldwater. I went door-to-door, handing out two books, one by Phyllis Schlafly – A Choice, Not An Echo – and another called A Texas Looks At Lyndon – A Study in Illegitimate Power, by J. Evetts Haley.
Doing this brought me to the attention of a local Young Republican group in Lake County, Illinois. They took me to rallies and airport press conferences and such, giving me a taste for politics.
Moving from suburban Chicago to suburban Atlanta before the ’68 election, my Young Republican ties led me to becoming president of the Teenage Republicans (TARs) of Georgia. That got me into a lot of rallies and events. I met John Wayne at the premiere of The Green Berets in Atlanta’s Fox Theater, and former Vice President Richard Nixon at a Young Republican event prior to his election. This is the kind of thing I think Charlie might have done before he became college age.
In short, I was “ground zero” for being a Charlie Kirk target, just a couple of generations too soon.
His death also reminded me of my involvement in the 1976 presidential campaign in South Carolina.
At that time, the state Republican Party was almost non-existent. Jimmy Carter was running for the Democrats, and everybody in South Carolina assumed that meant he was a Southern conservative. Having lived in Georgia during his governorship, I knew better, but how to get that into the public’s head?
Fortunately, the head of the state Republican Party that election season was a twenty-three-year-old Lee Atwater.
Later a leading light in the Reagan administration, Lee was the reason George H.W. Bush won the nomination and presidency in 1988. That was twelve years later, but in 1976, Lee made a huge impact on South Carolina’s Republican Party. I was his entire staff. Two years older than Lee, and already experienced in publicity and marketing, I became his Director for Media Relations and Strategy – the first of three campaigns for president that I held those positions.
Struggling for how to get people to even think about voting for Ford, Lee and I came up with an idea that was priceless in its day, and might still work fifty-some years later.
For each debate, we secured the largest ballrooms in the largest hotel in the five largest cities – Charleston, Columbia, Spartanburg, Aiken and suburban Charlotte. We had each hotel set up television monitors all around the ballroom, then encouraged them to set up cash bars. These became the way we paid for the ballrooms and AV set-ups.
We invited the relatively few – thousands, but not a lot of thousands – of local Republicans, urging them to attend. The price of admission was priceless – an uncommitted voter.
In ’76, South Carolina was still dealing with the last vestiges of “prohibition.” Liquor by the drink remained illegal, except at events like ours or the many “private clubs,” the man-on-the-street’s answer to that prohibition. An open bar was magnetic. People enjoyed their new-found freedom at our events.
Naturally, we showed each debate on the television monitors. After a few drinks, without coaching, whenever Carter made a blunder – he was smooth, but this happened enough to help us make this work – the Republicans began laughing and catcalling. Soon enough, just as planned, the uncommitted registered voters – by now a bit tipsy – began laughing too. Then, whenever Ford scored a point, our faithful began cheering.
After each debate, we made it known that there were a fleet of local taxis, waiting to take them home. The hotels agreed to let our attendees park there overnight, though a lot of our attendees chose to stay the night, presumably to continue the party after hours.
The end result, just as Lee and I planned, was a bunch of potentially hung over voters who’d begun supporting Ford, even if they weren’t quite sure why they now liked the president.
I don’t mean to imply that Lee Atwater used open bars in a state still mired in prohibition to encourage supporters, but I repeatedly saw his savvy and insightful approach to reaching people.
Charlie Kirk was clearly cut from the same cloth. He welcomed – invited – debate with his most vitriolic opponents. More times than not, Charlie turned them around.
Just as Lee and I did, half a century ago.
His passing, like the late, great Lee Atwater’s passing, came decades too soon. Each death left a young family bereft of their husband and father, a tragedy that time will help fade but never cease to be a source of pain.
They left their legacies for very different reasons. Each loss was a tragedy in a couple of ways. Charlie will be mourned by all those he’d contacted, to all he’d helped. Unfortunately, there is a much larger group – current and future college students who never saw him, or who were born too late to have encountered him. These poor souls won’t mourn him, but they should, for theirs is a real loss.
Someday soon – perhaps before the 2026 campaign, and certainly before the 2028 campaign, a new leader will arise and – not replace Charlie, because that can’t be done. That replacement will not fill his shoes. However, someone will assume a new mantle, striving as Charlie Kirk did to help college students see there is another, a better and far more honest path for them.
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Ned Barnett is a prolific writer and a regular content contributor to American Thinker. A long-time political activist – he worked with the late, great Lee Atwater in President Ford’s reelection campaign, along with many candidates for the US Senate, the House of Representatives and state Governors. Earlier this year, Ned ghost-wrote a campaign bio for a candidate running for Governor in the Midwest.
When he’s not being “political,” Ned ghostwrites books – 19 published so far. Ned also writes and publishes his own books as well – 41 and counting. He helps writers as a co-writer or writing coach. He helps authors “self-publish” their book, as well as promoting their books, which he’s done since 1982. For more information, contact Ned at 702-561-1167 or nedbarnett51@gmail.com.
Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed
