The Shoe Carnival NOligarchy Profile
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Shoe Carnival earns a NOligarchy Score of 98.01 out of 100 — one of the cleanest corporate accountability profiles in its sector. From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), this regional footwear chain recorded no federal lobbying spend, no Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions, no regulatory fines, and no stock buybacks. The picture that emerges is a company that, at least on the public record, chose to stay out of Washington and out of the headlines.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
97.8
Wealth Extraction
85.5
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: 97.77/100. Shoe Carnival spent nothing on federal lobbying and channeled nothing into a corporate PAC. A trace amount — $104 in individual executive donations to outside candidates — is the entirety of its recorded political footprint.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 85.75/100. The score reflects a CEO-to-worker pay gap that is real and meaningful, even though the company did not pursue buybacks or dividends during the covered period.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 100/100. No regulatory fines. No recorded violations. A perfect score on the public compliance record.
Shoe Carnival ranks 1st out of 12 companies in the Shoe retailers sector — well above the sector average score of 81.5. Where most competitors are racking up lobbying bills, fines, or shareholder payouts, Shoe Carnival stands apart as the accountability leader in its peer group.
The Bottom Line: A Quiet Company With One Loud Number
Shoe Carnival generated $1.135 billion in annual revenue and chose, by every available public measure, not to spend it on political influence or shareholder enrichment schemes. That restraint is genuine and noteworthy. But one figure cuts through the clean record: the CEO collected about $4.06 million in a single year while the median Shoe Carnival worker took home $25,637 — a ratio of 158-to-1. For a company that otherwise avoids the tactics this publication typically scrutinizes, that gap is the one story the data insists on telling.
No Footprint in Washington
Shoe Carnival is effectively invisible in the federal influence machine. The Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filing registry records zero dollars in federal lobbying across the entire two-year period — no retained firms, no in-house lobbyists, no issue areas filed, no bills referenced. The company hired no outside lobbying firms and employed no revolving-door alumni of federal agencies or congressional offices.
On the campaign finance side, the company operates no corporate PAC and contributed nothing to outside political committees. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows just $104 in individual donations by executives who listed Shoe Carnival as their employer — a single Q3 2024 transaction. That is the full extent of the company’s recorded political activity.
For a $1.1 billion retailer operating across a sector where competitors routinely pour money into Washington to shape tax policy, trade rules, and labor regulations, Shoe Carnival’s absence from that arena is a deliberate choice — and a meaningful one.
The Pay Gap That Remains
Shoe Carnival’s CEO pay ratio is 158:1, drawn directly from the company’s SEC DEF 14A proxy filing. That means the CEO received $4,058,347 in total compensation while the median Shoe Carnival employee — a worker likely standing on a sales floor helping customers find the right size — earned $25,637 for the year. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $4.06 million, worth more than 158 of those workers’ annual paychecks combined.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
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passes the median employee’s full annual pay
2:10 PM · January 2
158× the median employee’s pay
At 158:1, Shoe Carnival's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 2:10 PM on January 2.
No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for the two-year period. Because no buybacks occurred, there is no sum of money to convert into a hypothetical per-worker raise, and no mechanism by which a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding could have triggered executive performance bonuses during this period.
What the data leaves on the table is the pay gap itself. Shoe Carnival’s 5,200 employees — the people ringing up sales, stocking shelves, and keeping stores running — had a median annual salary of just under $25,700. That is not a living wage in most American cities. The CEO’s compensation package, by contrast, is not tied to any buyback program or outsized shareholder distribution. It simply reflects a structural decision about whose labor the company values most.
A Clean Record on the Public Docket
Shoe Carnival’s compliance record, as captured by public enforcement databases, shows no fines and no recorded violations across the two-year period. The Playing by the Rules score is a perfect 100 out of 100.
No pattern of regulatory infractions exists to analyze. No single large penalty stands out. No federal agency pursued an enforcement action that reached the public record. For a retail chain with more than 5,000 employees operating across multiple states, that kind of clean docket is not guaranteed — it reflects either genuine compliance, settlements that did not reach the public record, or enforcement gaps in the agencies that monitor this sector. The public record shows only what is on it: nothing.
No public subsidies are recorded either. Shoe Carnival did not appear in subsidy tracking during this period, meaning no tax incentives, grants, or economic development deals surfaced in the public data.