Flagler County leaders from across a broad spectrum were reacting with shock, sadness, anxiety and concern to the assassination Wednesday of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist, charismatic speaker and incendiary provocateur, who was shot while doing what he did best: engage with university students while manifesting the nation’s oldest tradition of free expression.
The killing is the latest in an alarming rise in political violence targeting high officials on both sides of the political spectrum, from the attempted kidnapping of Michigan’s Democratic governor in 2020 to the storming of the Capitol the following year to the attempted bombing of both parties’ headquarters to the two assassination attempts against President Trump and the murder of Minnesota’s Democratic House Speaker an her husband earlier this year, all of it suggesting breaking or broken politics.
Kirk, 31, a father of two, was the founder of Turning Point Action, an influential political action organization, and in 2016 had been the youngest speaker ever to address the Republican National Convention. He was shot by an individual apparently of college age while addressing a very large audience at a Utah Valley University amphitheater some 45 miles south of Salt Lake City. His killer has not been apprehended or identified, though law enforcement had collected significant clues by this morning, including the murder rifle.
“I’m incredibly saddened by the loss of Charlie Kirk—for his family and for our country,” Palm Coast Vice Mayor Theresa Pontieri said today. “He was a man of God who stood up for the very principles that our country was founded on. Charlie’s unwavering passion for his beliefs and his dedication to engaging with the next generation was inspiring. His willingness to stand firm on his principles, even in the face of criticism, reflects a commendable sense of conviction and courage. His work embodied a sincere commitment to fostering a nation where free speech and individual liberty are cherished, attempting to make respectful discourse the norm. He will be missed. May God bless his family as they mourn the loss of a wonderful husband, father, and son.”
Local reactions echoed Pontieri’s regardless of politics or background.
Jay Scherr, president of Flagler Tiger Bay Club, the non-partisan civic organization built on principles of open and respectful discourse, was preparing to send a message to the club’s board and membership this afternoon. Noting the coincidence with 9/11, the message read, in part: “ These moments call us to reflect on our shared values, the choices we make in the face of tragedy, and the example we set for others.”
Reiterating the club’s guiding principles, including “the ability to bring passion to issues without anger,” Scherr added: “Now more than ever, these principles matter. Difficult conversations are necessary. When approached with civility and respect, they keep the door open to understanding and progress. In a time of increasing polarization, we have both an opportunity and a responsibility to lower the temperature, model constructive dialogue, and unite around the many values and hopes we share.”
Mark Dwyer, a Palm Coast attorney and the first vice president of Flagler Tiger Bay Club, at times sings the National Anthem or other songs emblematic of the club’s–and the nation’s–principles. “It’s an unspeakable tragedy, he said of the murder. “As a country that values free speech as our one of our highest principles, the very first amendment to our Constitution, to have people violently disagreeing because people speak differently and their whole different beliefs is the most un-American thing that I can think of. The fact of losing a young father and husband, my heart just goes out to their family.”
Superintendent LaShakia Moore was at the annual 9/11 commemorative stair climb at Hammock Beach Resort this morning. She had participated in the climb to some extent. The killing had left her speechless. “I will tell you,” she said, “standing out there at the 9/11 stair climb as we’re doing this, and you’re seeing the flag and you’re hearing the national anthem, and you have all of these people to reflect on something 24 years ago, you can’t help but reflect on yesterday.”
The superintendent addressed the matter from the perspective of the district’s 13,000 students. “What happened yesterday is unacceptable, and we cannot normalize it, we cannot, we just can’t,” Moore said. “I want our students to know that, know the adults around them don’t think it’s okay. But for me as an educator, I want our students to know how to engage in discourse with others who believe and think differently than they do.”
That is the norm in school, Moore said, where disagreements escalate to violence only “very rarely.” In class, “our students are taught how to take opposing views. They are taught how to engage in dialogue and discourse within the classroom.” It’s a different story beyond schoolhouse doors, where several district students have lost their lives in gun violence over the last half dozen years. “We see violence that happens out amongst young people and we as adults have to just continue to make sure that we’re showing them a better and a different way in order to resolve conflict,” Moore said.
David Ayres, President of Flagler Broadcasting, hosts the weekly Free For All Fridays show on WNZF and on YouTube, essentially the only regular audio-visual forum for diverse local views. The killing left him “stunned,” he said. Kirk “wasn’t just a great speaker, he was a great listener, and people loved his open mic format where anybody and everybody could just get up and get on the soapbox and express their views and openly debate them with respect. That style is what particularly younger people like. That’s why he was popular with the college campuses and things like that. That’s what they were thirsting for, not hate. Ayers added: “I hope that his assassination inspires thousands of people to adopt his style and make America a better place, which is what he wanted to do.”
A “deeply saddened” Darryl Boyer, a former candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, is among those Kirk directly influenced. He’d met him early in his college years and joined Kirk’s Turning Point chapter on his campus.
“As a Gen Z conservative, his leadership left a lasting mark on my life,” Boyer said today. “During college, especially through Covid and the 2020 election, when campuses weren’t always welcoming to diverse viewpoints, TPUSA created a space where conservative voices could grow and be heard. His vision inspired countless young leaders, myself included, and his impact will continue for generations.” Boyer credits Kirk for giving him “the confidence to speak up, stay true to my values, and become more engaged in leadership and public service.”
Kirk was a close confidant of President Trump, whose election last November owed a debt to Kirk’s power of persuasion among young voters (Trump called the killing a “dark moment for America.”) Kirk was a ubiquitous presence on television and online, writing books and hosting “The Charlie Kirk Show,” a podcast. Between his ideology and remarkable media savvy, he thrived in the tradition of Aimee McPherson, Charles Coughlin, Robert Welch and Phyllis Schlafly, achieving a level of influence at a younger age than his predecessors.
He also provoked criticism often as radical as his views: he was a climate change denier, had no patience for diversity, multiculturalism or LGBTQ rights, endorsed the racist Great Replacement Theory, which has its roots in anti-Semitism, opposed the separation of church and state, and made provocation a thematic part of his personality. He often spoke with the motto “prove me wrong” emblazoned near him, as he did Wednesday. If his positions would have been considered on the fringe of extremism in previous decades, they no longer were, in no small part due to his role in mainstreaming them among a segment of the hard-right movement.
Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, again called for “war” after the assassination, by reposting the call from a Jan. 6 defendant, as he had been, while U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, the Florida Republican, wrote on X that “Every damn one of you who called us fascists did this.”
Sheriff Rick Saly is concerned about the assassination spawning more violence. The sheriff’s 1991 master’s thesis (“The Futuristic Needs Assessment of Florida’s 21st Century Chief Law Enforcement Administrator”) was about civil unrest, predicting that people would give up “some freedoms and liberties in the name of security.” He saw the Kirk assassination as a “throwback to the 1960s,” when several leaders were assassinated–the two Kennedys, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King–and violence only ramped up toward the end of the decade, with frequent domestic terrorism. (“From the time I was a youth in North Carolina and experienced the shocking assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK,” Flagler Beach Commissioner Scott Spradley, an attorney, said in a text. “I would never have believed that 60 years later, this barbaric practice continues to thrive. I feel much sorrow for Mr. Kirk’s family and friends during this dreadful time.”)
There’s data to back up the sheriff’s and Spradley’s concerns. Studies find between 8 and 40 percent support for political violence among Americans, depending on the study. But the study of studies also cautions that “despite media attention, political violence is rare, amounting to a little more than 1% of violent hate crimes in the United States.”
“You can have discourse by opinion and through free speech, and then the voters get to decide. But trying to affect change this way usually has the opposite effect,” Staly said. “It rallies one side or the other. I was shocked. I mean, here’s a young family now, two children, a wife that’s never going to see her husband again, two children, one basically an infant, really, from at least the photos I saw, because I didn’t know him. They’re going to grow up without their father or without their husband, and it’s just a tragedy all around. It’s not the way to get your point across. You might silence one person, but you will start a movement that’s even stronger than the one person. And we’ve seen that.”
Perry Mitrano, who heads the Flagler County Republican Executive Committee, called the murder “senseless and disturbing,” decrying the silencing of a voice that had been a “motivator of people, especially students.” Mitrano noted that there had been yet another school shooting today (in Colorado). “Violence has no place in politics, no place in schools. It’s never going to be acceptable, but it still happens,” he said. “On this anniversary of 9/11 it reminds us that innocent people die because murderers had no comprehensible reason at all for their senseless actions. The Florida GOP is praying for the families of all those victims.”
Janet Sullivan, who heads the Flagler County Democratic Party, said “violence is never the right answer to solve anything. And I feel so bad for his wife and his children and the rest of his family.” Sullivan had not known much about him–she does not own a television–other than what she had learned reading about him. She does not care for his views, but noted that no views justify a killing.
Sullivan was disturbed by the reactions she was gleaning, such as Tarrio echoing the call for “war” and other worrisome reactions she saw–from both sides of the spectrum. But she repeatedly stressed: “We don’t know who did it.” Yet blame has been frequent, she said, heightening local anxieties.
“From the reading I did last night, this is only going to get worse until it doesn’t,” Sullivan said. “And I can tell you that based on some of the comments that people had after this, I’m a little worried about going to work today. I’m a little worried about all of our friends, my friends from Flagler County, my friends from St Johns County, who are going to go up to Castillo de Marco on Saturday morning to march to save our Florida parks.” People, she said, “are just inciting more of this. And I’m afraid that there’s enough people saying this that there might be some people who will do this.”
Staly echoed Sullivan in one regard: “My prediction here is that it’s only going to get worse as we head to the mid-term elections,” he said.
“This is exactly why the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has a Homeland Security section,” the sheriff said. “It’s why we have a Criminal Intelligence Unit, because we try to vet all the events, as long as we know about them, and try to prepare and see if there have been threats. Now, the best thing that the community can do is if they hear a threat or see something that causes concern–posted on Tiktok, social media platforms–to let us know, let us vet it.”
Local voices echoed national voices in other ways. “The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in politics without fear of violence,” Ezra Klein, the opinion columnist and New York Times podcaster. “To lose that is to risk losing everything. Charlie Kirk — and his family — just lost everything. As a country, we came a step closer to losing everything, too.”
Bob Cuff, the attorney and former Palm Coast City Council member who took civility to an art form, said when asked for a reaction this morning that his response was always going to be John Donne’ tolling line, “‘Each man’s death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind.’ No right or left, no ifs, ands or buts,” Cuff wrote. “Until we truly learn that and do what we can to apply it in our lives today, to every life, the cycle will only grow worse.”
Leave a Reply