The Fleet Feet NOligarchy Profile
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Fleet Feet earns a NOligarchy Score of 80.56 out of 100 — a result that reflects two diverging realities: an unblemished political record on one side, and a combination of a fresh workplace safety citation and an executive pay gap the public has no way to scrutinize on the other.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
100.0
Wealth Extraction
59.9
Playing by the Rules
52.5
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: 100/100. Fleet Feet spent nothing on federal lobbying and made no Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). Zero dollars were channeled toward Washington influence operations of any kind.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 60.14/100. This score reflects the absence of any disclosed executive compensation or shareholder payout data — a gap that exists because Fleet Feet is structured as a private company and faces no public disclosure obligations. An industry benchmark points to a meaningful pay gap at the top.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 52.54/100. A single Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) workplace safety citation issued in 2025 put $5,300 in penalties on the books — the company’s only recorded regulatory action in the two-year period.
The Sector Context: Fleet Feet ranks 9th out of 12 among companies sharing its federal industry classification (Shoe retailers), against a sector average of 81.5. At 80.56, Fleet Feet trails that average by roughly one point. The company looks clean on political spending but falls behind the industry standard once workplace safety and pay opacity are weighted in.
The Bottom Line: One Safety Lapse and a Pay Gap Nobody Can Verify
Fleet Feet’s strongest card remains its complete absence from federal influence markets — no lobbying, no PAC spending, no revolving-door hires. But the company carries a mark on its compliance record: an OSHA safety citation in 2025 that directly touched the frontline workers who staff its stores. The $5,300 penalty is a rounding error against a company estimated to generate roughly $500 million in annual revenue, but it is the kind of infraction that matters most to the people least able to absorb the consequences of a workplace injury. Layered on top of that is the continuing opacity around executive compensation — because Fleet Feet is privately held, there is no public filing that shows what the gap between the top of the company and the bottom actually looks like.
No Footprint in Washington
Fleet Feet has no presence in federal politics whatsoever. The Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) database shows zero lobbying filings during the two-year period. No PAC was registered or funded. No executive donations to federal candidates were recorded through the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Fleet Feet hired no outside lobbying firms, retained no in-house government affairs staff, and touched no bills in Congress during the tracking period. No former government officials were brought on to work the halls of Capitol Hill on the company’s behalf. For a retail chain with locations across the country — subject to labor law, trade policy, and consumer product regulation like any other retailer — the decision to stay entirely out of federal influence markets is a notable one.
EXHIBIT — THE RESERVED SEAT
$0 in lobbying · $0 in PAC money
Fleet Feet filed no federal lobbying and ran no corporate PAC in this window — the reserved seat at the witness table sits empty.
An Undisclosed Pay Gap
Fleet Feet is a private company, which means it is not required to file proxy statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), does not publish a CEO-to-worker pay ratio, and does not report stock buybacks or dividend distributions to the public. No buyback or dividend data is recorded for the two-year tracking period — not because those payouts did not happen, but because no public filing exists that would show them.
The best available signal on internal pay inequality comes from outside the company. Fleet Feet’s CEO pay ratio is not publicly disclosed; the best available figure is 165:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector, per AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch. That benchmark suggests the person running the company takes home roughly 165 times what a typical frontline employee earns — meaning that for every dollar a store associate makes in a year, the CEO’s equivalent collects $165. Whether Fleet Feet’s actual internal ratio is higher or lower than that industry benchmark is something the public cannot know, and that absence is itself the accountability gap.
One Safety Citation in Two Years
Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, Fleet Feet accumulated one recorded regulatory action: a $5,300 OSHA workplace safety citation issued in 2025. That single case is the entirety of the company’s compliance record in the Good Jobs First violation database for this period. One citation does not establish a pattern — but it does mean that somewhere inside Fleet Feet’s operation, regulators found a safety standard that wasn’t being met, and the people most exposed to that lapse were the workers on the floor, not the executives setting the policies.
This is the median American household.
Two earners, a kid, a dog, $80,610 a year — the exact middle of the country (U.S. Census).
NOTICE OF PENALTY — HOUSEHOLD SCALE
ISSUED TO
the median U.S. household
BASIS
0.0011% of annual income
$0.85
the same share of income that $5,300 in penalties takes of the company’s revenue
Fleet Feet's $5,300 in regulatory penalties is 0.0011% of its revenue — for a median household, the same bite as a $0.85 ticket.
Fleet Feet received no public subsidies during the tracking period: no government grants, no tax credits routed through economic development programs, and no incentive packages from state or local authorities appear in the public record.