The Ace Hardware NOligarchy Profile
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NOligarchy Score
73.1
/ 100
acehardware.com
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Ace Hardware earned a NOligarchy Score of 73.12 out of 100 — above the sector average, but the widest accountability question in the profile remains the pay gap between its leadership and its workforce, one that private company status keeps permanently out of public view.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
96.0
Wealth Extraction
42.2
Playing by the Rules
65.8
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 95.98/100. Ace Hardware filed zero dollars in federal lobbying expenditures and operated no Political Action Committee (PAC) during the tracking period. The only political footprint on record is a combined $2,270 in personal donations made by individual executives — loose change measured against a $9.5 billion enterprise.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 42.23/100. Because Ace Hardware is privately held, no stock buyback or dividend data appears on the public record. The score reflects the weight of an estimated CEO pay ratio that suggests significant distance between what leadership earns and what frontline workers take home — but that figure cannot be confirmed or challenged without a public filing.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 65.76/100. Three regulatory violations totaling $44,640 in fines, covering workplace safety and air pollution, sit alongside $666,886 in public subsidies collected during the same years — a combination that defines this pillar’s score and the sharpest accountability tension in the entire profile.
Ace Hardware ranks 3rd out of 6 companies in the Building Material & Supplies Dealers sector. The sector average score is 55.9 — Ace Hardware’s 73.12 places it roughly 17 points above that average, a meaningful accountability outlier among peers, though not the commanding leader in this group.
The Bottom Line: Pocketing Public Subsidies While Paying Fines for Worker Safety
Ace Hardware, a retailer with $9.5 billion in annual revenue, spent nothing lobbying Congress and assembled no PAC — genuinely unusual for a company of its size. But from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), regulators cited Ace Hardware three times for workplace safety and air pollution violations, collecting $44,640 in fines. In that same window, state and local governments handed the company $666,886 in public subsidies — nearly fifteen times the amount it paid in penalties. That gap between public generosity and regulatory accountability is the sharpest imbalance this data reveals.
No Footprint in Washington
Ace Hardware spent exactly zero dollars on federal lobbying across the two-year period, according to Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) records. No lobbying firms were retained. No government agencies were visited. No bills were cited in any LDA filing. Ace Hardware hired zero former government officials to work its connections — there is no revolving door to speak of here.
The only trace of political activity across the entire period is $2,270 in personal contributions from executives recorded by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — roughly what a single Ace Hardware employee might earn in a week. For a $9.5 billion company operating in a sector that includes Home Depot and Lowe’s — both of which channel significant sums into Washington influence operations — Ace Hardware’s absence from the influence game is a meaningful structural choice, not a coincidence.
It is worth noting what that absence means. Ace Hardware is a dealer-owned cooperative, meaning its 5,000-plus member retailers are the true owners. That structure may reduce the incentive to lobby for policies that concentrate gains at the corporate level, since there is no publicly traded stock price to protect. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: no identifiable federal influence spending on the public record.
An Undisclosed Pay Gap
Because Ace Hardware is a privately held cooperative, it is not required to file proxy statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and it does not. That means no stock buyback data, no dividend records, and no verified CEO pay ratio appear anywhere on the public record for this company.
The best available figure comes from AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks: 246:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector. In plain terms, that estimate suggests the chief executive may take home roughly 246 times what a typical worker in the sector earns. Whether the gap is wider or narrower at Ace Hardware specifically is not publicly disclosed — and that absence of disclosure is itself the accountability gap. No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for this company, so no shareholder payout analysis is possible and no per-worker calculation can be made.
Fines for Workers and Air, Subsidies for the Balance Sheet
Ace Hardware accumulated three regulatory violations totaling $44,640 over the two-year tracking period — this window is a fraction of the company’s full docket on the source site — covering two categories of offense: workplace safety and air pollution.
The largest offense group by dollar amount is workplace safety — two cases cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) totaling $26,440. The single largest fine in the record is an $18,200 air pollution penalty issued in 2024 by the California South Coast Air Quality Management District. OSHA actions include an $18,000 workplace safety citation in 2024 and an $8,440 citation in 2025.
While regulators were issuing those citations, governments were simultaneously handing Ace Hardware public money. The company collected $666,886 in subsidies across 2024–2026 — two grants, the largest a $570,000 award in 2026 and a $96,886 grant in 2024. Taxpayers funded the company’s expansion; workers and communities absorbed the cost of its compliance gaps.
$666,886
taxpayer subsidies
$44,640
regulatory fines
14.9:1
Ace Hardware collected $666,886 in taxpayer subsidies against $44,640 in regulatory fines — 14.9 subsidy dollars for every $1 in penalties.