Harrison Butker, an NFL placekicker best known for his wide-right worldview, hoped to parlay clutch kicks into political clout. His plan is not working out.
A report released Tuesday by the investigative team at OpenSecrets shows Butker’s fledgling political action committee, known as Upright, is having trouble getting any lift. The PAC’s recent filing with the Federal Election Commission oozed lots of malaise and showed little money. Through the end of June 2025, Butker’s PAC had taken in only $4,023 in contributions this year and had just $1,786.43 left in its coffers. And, according to OpenSecrets, of the $7,400 Upright has spent, “none of it benefitted Republican political candidates, either through direct donations to candidate committees or via advertisements that boost Republicans or criticize Democrats.”
Butker is now in his ninth season with the Kansas City Chiefs. He led the NFL in scoring in 2019, kicked the game-winning field goal with seconds on the clock in Super Bowl 57, and broke the record for longest Super Bowl FG with a 57-yarder in last year’s big game. Yet outside the team’s fanbase, his renown comes more from his mouth than his leg. He gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College of Atchison, Kan., in May 2024 in which he seemed desperate for folks to know he’s less culturally enlightened than a medieval pope. Butker’s 20-minute talk included him saying Pride Month celebrations represented a “deadly sin sort of pride,” railing against “the tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” denigrating IVF treatments as a sign of societal “disorder,” urging male graduates to keep “fighting against the cultural emasculation of men,” and counseling women graduates that “homemaker” was their highest calling.
Butker got mostly undressed for the address. Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, released a statement saying the views Butker laid out “are not those of the NFL as an organization.” GLAAD proclaimed Butker’s speech “was inaccurate, ill-informed, and woefully out of step.” Butker even peeved the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, the group of nuns that runs Benedictine College, which said he “fostered division” by pooh-poohing professional careers for women.
Butker used the crappy coverage as a springboard to get officially activisty. He filed paperwork to make Upright official in September 2024, just before he divulged his first political endorsement, backing Republican Senator Josh Hawley. "So thankful for Sen. Hawley for his pro-life stance, for him fighting for strong borders,” Butker said at a Hawley rally in early October 2024. “We have to protect this country and get it in order."
But a report in the Kansas City Star in December 2024 showed Butker’s group didn’t get many fools to part with their money out of the gate, and didn’t give a dime to any political candidates. According to the newspaper, the PAC “raised about $35,928 and spent about $30,262.” All but $109.74 of Upright’s expenditures went to Frontline Strategies, a political fundraising outfit that bills itself as the “Top Fundraising Vendor for Trump.” The OpenSecrets findings show little has changed in the new year.
Butker’s righty rants, however, have gotten himself inside the Trump circle. He was invited to the White House last week for the signing of an executive order to get the Presidential Fitness Test back in schools, and during the ceremony President Trump diverged from his prepared address to single out Butker and call him a “good-looking sucker.” In the tongue a medieval pope would favor, De gustibus non est disputandum. But good god.
