The Crutchfield Corporation NOligarchy Profile
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Crutchfield Corporation earns a NOligarchy Score of 93.4 out of 100 — one of the strongest showings in its sector, reflecting a company that has stayed entirely out of the political influence game, kept a spotless regulatory record, and operates at a scale where the pay gap between the top and the workforce is narrower than most of its peers.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
96.2
Wealth Extraction
74.7
Playing by the Rules
100.0
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: 96.16/100. Crutchfield spent nothing on federal lobbying and operates no Political Action Committee (PAC). A modest amount of personal donations by company employees was recorded, but the company itself has no institutional influence machinery in Washington.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 74.66/100. As a private company, Crutchfield is not required to disclose buybacks, dividends, or executive compensation. The best available industry benchmark for the CEO pay gap is narrower than most retailers — a meaningful signal, even if the underlying numbers are not publicly verifiable.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 100/100. A perfect score. No fines, no violations, no regulatory penalties on the public record.
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The Sector Context: Crutchfield ranks 5th out of 12 in the Electronics and Appliance Retailers federal industry classification, against a sector average score of 83.5. Crutchfield sits above that average — a genuine accountability outlier among its industry peers, and one of the cleaner records in a sector that includes companies with far more aggressive political and regulatory footprints.
The Bottom Line: A Quiet Operator With a Genuinely Clean Docket
Crutchfield has done something most companies in its sector have not: it has kept entirely out of Washington and accumulated zero regulatory penalties from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the full two-year tracking period (8 quarters). That record is real. The company’s private structure means the questions that matter most to workers — how much does the person at the top earn compared to the person on the sales floor, and where does the profit go — have no publicly verifiable answers. But the best available benchmark puts the pay gap at a level notably below the retail industry norm, and the absence of lobbying spend or PAC activity is not a technicality — it reflects a deliberate choice to stay out of the influence economy entirely.
No Footprint in Washington
Crutchfield has filed zero federal lobbying disclosures under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) and maintains no PAC. According to Senate LDA filings, the company spent nothing on federal lobbying across the two-year period. No lobbying firms were retained, no government entities were contacted through registered lobbyists, and no bills were cited in any LDA filing — because none were filed.
The company also hired no former government officials to leverage political connections. The revolving door — the well-worn path from congressional staff or regulatory agencies into private-sector influence roles — shows zero traffic at Crutchfield.
The only political spending in the data is $2,000 in personal donations made by individuals who listed Crutchfield as their employer, recorded in Q4 2024 per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. These are individual contributions, not corporate PAC funds.
For a consumer electronics retailer, the absence of lobbying is worth noting in context. Companies in this space often push hard on issues like sales tax treatment of online transactions, consumer privacy regulations, tariffs on imported electronics components, and right-to-repair legislation — all of which directly affect margins and competitive positioning. Crutchfield has chosen to stay out of those fights at the federal level, at least on the public record.
An Undisclosed Pay Gap — Narrower Than the Industry Norm
Crutchfield is not required to publicly disclose its CEO pay ratio. The best available figure is 24:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector, per AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch. That means for every dollar a typical Crutchfield worker brings home, the person at the top is estimated to pocket $24 — a gap that, while still real, sits dramatically below the retail industry’s prevailing norms, where ratios of several hundred to one are common.
No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for Crutchfield — the company has no publicly traded shares, and profit distributions to private owners are not publicly disclosed. The full picture of how earnings flow between the executive suite and the workforce remains outside public view.
A Clean Record on the Public Docket
Crutchfield’s compliance record is the clearest part of this profile. Across the two-year period, the company accumulated zero fines, zero regulatory penalties, and zero recorded violations — a perfect score. In a retail sector where wage theft citations, consumer protection settlements, and environmental penalties are routine, that absence stands out.
No public subsidy data is recorded for Crutchfield, so there is no documented case of the company receiving government grants or tax credits while simultaneously running afoul of regulators.
A clean public record like this can reflect one of two things: a company genuinely operating within the rules, or a company whose size and private structure keeps it below the regulatory visibility threshold. What the data shows is the absence of documented violations across this two-year window — a fraction of the full historical docket that would be visible on the source site. What it cannot show is everything that is never required to be reported.