Harrison Butker’s PAC raised about $36,000 this fall. None of it went to politicians
Less than a month before Election Day, Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, announced a new effort to get more deeply involved in politics, launching a new political action committee to support candidates who would fight for conservative Christian values.
But Butker’s PAC didn’t spend a dime on any political candidates or political committees this election cycle, according to campaign finance records released this month.
Instead, more than 91% of the money that people donated to his group went toward fundraising fees for Frontline Strategies, a Pennsylvania-based Republican political consulting firm that helps candidates and PACs raise money.
Butker announced the formation of Upright PAC while campaigning with Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, months after he drew national political attention for his controversial commencement speech at Benedictine College last spring, where he implied that the women graduates should be more excited to have a family than for their careers, condemned LGBTQ pride and criticized President Joe Biden.
In the span of about five weeks in October and November, the PAC raised about $35,928 and spent about $30,262 over that same period. Almost all of the money, except $109.74, went toward fundraising.
It is unclear why the PAC did not make any donations this election cycle. Upright PAC did not respond to questions about why it had not spent any money on candidates or political groups in the 2024 campaign. Frontline Strategies also did not respond to a request for comment.
But the spending raised eyebrows among campaign finance experts.
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, raised attention to Upright PAC’s spending on social media. Jordan Libowitz, their communications director, told The Star he believes that Butker was “ripped off as badly as anyone’s ever gotten ripped off” or that he was padding the pockets of political consultants.
“When you sign a contract with a fundraising consultant, it says what percentage of the money you’re paying. So they had to know how much was coming out,” Libowitz said. “You have to ask them, what were they actually doing, and what were they planning on doing, because there’s no money spent on really anything else.”
Joseph Birkenstock, an attorney who specializes in campaign law, said it was possible the PAC felt it needed to spend money in order to raise even more money, given its relatively small size.
But he also noted that the timing of the PAC’s launch – just weeks before the election – made it unlikely that it would be able to contribute much to the 2024 campaign, because it wouldn’t have time to raise and spend enough money.
“If you just create it in the middle of October, kind of by definition, you certainly aren’t in a position to do anything for that year’s elections,” Birkenstock said. “And as a football player it also strikes me as odd. It’s like he’s got a lot of other things to be doing in the middle of October and you would think he’d devote more bandwidth to it in the offseason.”
Small donations
While the PAC is small by political standards – the political action committees supporting federal candidates often raise hundreds of millions – it’s unusual to see nearly all of its money go toward political consultants.
Often, a political action committee will spend money either on “independent expenditures,” which means campaigning on behalf of a candidate, or by donating directly to candidates themselves.
Frontline Strategies website says it offers services to help find as many donors as possible, data to build lists about potential donors and build custom data files. They also create social media content and ads for an additional fee.
While it is possible that expenses like renting donor lists or buying digital advertising to raise awareness of the PAC were simply listed as “fundraising fees” instead of a more detailed line item, it is unusual that the PAC had no other expenses, like hiring staff.
Occasionally, a PAC will form late in a political cycle as large donors try to tilt the electoral playing field in their favor. For example, a group tied to Senate Majority Mitch McConnell formed a political action committee shortly before the 2022 Republican primary in an effort to defeat former Gov. Eric Greitens. The group was able to hide its donations from the McConnell-aligned PAC until after the primary was decided.
But most of Upright PAC’s money didn’t come from large donors – only $6,450 came from people who donated more than $200. None of those donations were from people in Kansas or Missouri, according to the filing.
Instead, most of the donations were “unitemized,” meaning they were smaller donations that came from the grassroots – people who are fans of Butker and his politics.
“It’s very clear that the political mission that he announced was not advanced at all,” Libowitz said. “And it’s questionable whether there was ever any plan to advance any political mission.”
Frontline Strategies is an established fundraising firm. It’s used by members of Congress like Reps. Nancy Mace, of South Carolina, and Byron Donalds, of Florida, and the firm was paid by Trump National Committee JFC, President-elect Donald Trump’s joint-fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee.
Frontline collected more than $3 million in fundraising fees from the Trump National Committee between April and October, less than 1% of the more than $375 million Trump’s committee raised in that timeframe.
“Harrison Butker, he’s been fairly prominent for quite a while. He was not making a splash for the first time this fall,” Birkenstock said. “He had been out there as a voice of his perspective in the community for quite a while. If he had done this in June or April, I would be saying that alright, that makes more sense.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
