NFL Owners Shower Republicans With Millions in Midterms Cash

This is part of a Front Office Sports series about sports spending in the 2026 midterm elections.

NFL owners have spent more than $18 million on candidates and committees in the 2026 midterm elections, Federal Election Commission records show.

Nearly all of it has gone to Republicans.

That’s not a surprise in the staid NFL, where conservative billionaires have long been in charge. Perhaps more surprising this election cycle is two owners giving heavily to liberal candidates: New Seahawks owner Vinod Khosla donated $2 million to the Democrats’ Senate arm, while Falcons owner Arthur Blank also spent $300,000 trying to help Democrats retake the upper chamber.

Blank, in an extreme rarity for an NFL owner, also contributed to the campaign of a self-described democratic socialist. He gave $3,500 to New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is running for her fifth term in the House and is widely seen as a 2028 presidential contender. A spokesperson for Blank confirmed his donations but otherwise declined to comment.

Both Khosla and Blank have donated to a single Republican each. Khosla, curiously, gave $5,000 to Chuck Fleischmann’s reelection campaign in June; Fleischmann is a Republican who has represented Tennessee in Congress since 2011. Khosla has almost exclusively given to Democrats otherwise.

Blank, the Home Depot billionaire who bought the Falcons in 2002, also gave $3,500 to Jay Feely’s campaign. Feely kicked in the NFL for 14 years—including four seasons in Atlanta—and is running as a Republican for a House seat in Arizona. (A wide group of sports figures have donated to Feely in his race.)

But Federal Election Commission records show that outside of Khosla and Blank, nearly every NFL dollar spent on Tuesday’s races went towards Republicans, led by the Walton-Penner family who owns the Broncos. Greg Penner, who is the CEO of the team and chairman of Walmart, gave $349,000, with most of it going to Great Opportunity PAC, a committee formed to back Tim Scott’s campaign in the Republican presidential primary that pivoted to outreach to Black and Hispanic voters for Donald Trump.

Penner is married to Carrie Walton Penner, the granddaughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton and the daughter of Broncos co-owner Rob Walton.

The elder Walton has been a major Republican donor in this cycle, as he has been in past elections. In all, he has spent nearly $9 million backing Republican candidates and committees, with $7 million of that going to the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, Inc., which has spent millions boosting Republican candidates in Senate battlegrounds.

In addition to Walton and Khosla—whose spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment—two other NFL owners spent more than a million dollars on this year’s races. Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have each spent heavily backing various Republican candidates and committees. Both donated to a group backing Ohio Republican Max Miller, whose ex-wife has accused him of domestic and child abuse amid a bitter custody fight; Miller denies the allegations. Jimmy Haslam gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee and $75,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, plus much smaller donations to GOP Senate candidates Dan Sullivan, Susan Collins, Jon Husted, Mike Rogers, and others. He also backed Texas Sen. John Cornyn in his primary loss to Ken Paxton.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, a longtime Republican donor, gave $1 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc., and another half million in Texas races, including $250,000 to a PAC supporting Paxton in a tight Senate race against Democrat James Talarico. 

Jones’s son Jerry Jones Jr. gave $50,000 to Paxton’s primary opponent, Cornyn, and $100,000 to Sen. Ten Cruz’s political action committee. The younger Jones gave more than $300,000 in total to Republicans, both in Texas and nationally.

Owners of more than half the teams in the NFL chipped in to the league’s Gridiron PAC, which spent more than $700,000 backing candidates and groups on both sides of the aisle. League commissioner Roger Goodell was one of many, many NFL figures who gave to Jay Feely’s committee; he gave the ex-kicker and Republican $7,000 in his race.

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, prolific donors who have both thrown major events for President Trump in the past, made big donations to groups supporting Republicans in Senate races across the country.

Ross made two $100,000 donations to PACs backing Republicans in Senate races in South Carolina and Florida, while Kraft gave $100,000 in September to the Great Lakes Conservative Fund, a committee that is spending millions—recently in concert with AIPAC—to elect Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race. Kraft has often supported Democrats, but he has long been a backer of Israel, which has emerged as a major issue in the Michigan race. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has campaigned there on cutting off U.S. military funding to the country.

While both men gave to a number of other Republican candidates and groups, each also backed a Democrat. Ross contributed $10,500 to a PAC tied to Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), and Kraft gave $27,000 to a group affiliated with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.).

This series was reported and produced by Amanda Christovich, Margaret Fleming, Eli Kronenberg, Katie Krzaczek, and Dennis Young.