Suite Landing Page using React and MUI

In order to overlap the footer's background, I used position:relative, but this caused the links to not work. I've tried all sorts of different z-index changes, but still no imporvement. Does anyone have any directions to explore for this fix?

Also, Im sruggling to get a transition on my primary button. I can only get a transition on the "mouse-off" action. On top of that, the blue from the mui button pops through during transition. How can I disable this?