Two years after Tractor Supply lit the fuse, the big-box home improvement industry still hasn't gotten the message. Lowe's still carries a 64/100 Woke Score in the Buy Woke Free database. John Deere is at 59. Home Depot — which once handed out BLM aprons and white-privilege training — sits at 56. They quietly scrubbed the words "DEI" from their corporate websites in 2025, but the policies, the political donations, and the HRC scorecards never really left.
If you're spending $2,000 on a new riding mower or $30,000 on a kitchen remodel, you have a choice: hand it to a company that lectures you on pronouns, or hand it to one that's earned the right to your truck-bed dollars. Here are seven patriot-friendly home improvement and hardware stores worth driving the extra fifteen minutes for in 2026.
The Three to Avoid: Lowe's, Home Depot, and John Deere
Let's name the problem first. According to the Buy Woke Free brand database:
- Lowe's — 64/100 (Woke): Even after their August 2024 rollback, Lowe's still carries a $55 million pledge for "women and minority-owned enterprises," a leftover web of business resource groups, and the political contribution history that put them on every conservative watchlist in the first place. They only walked back the HRC Corporate Equality Index survey after Robby Starbuck threatened to expose them — not because leadership grew a backbone.
- John Deere — 59/100 (Woke): The same company that built America's farms spent the last decade tying executive bonuses to "diversity metrics" and forcing employees through pronoun training. They cut the worst of it in July 2024, but Deere remains a top-quartile ESG performer and continues to fund left-leaning political campaigns at a 2-to-1 ratio.
- Home Depot — 56/100 (Woke): Home Depot wants you to forget the BLM aprons, the Pride logos, and the "white privilege" trainings. They renamed their DEI page "WeAreTHD" in March 2025 and called it a day. But the corporate giving, the HRC participation history, and the policy infrastructure are all still there — just behind a friendlier URL.
If you're tired of subsidizing the activism that targets you, here's where to spend your hardware money instead.
1. Tractor Supply — The 10/100 Gold Standard
Tractor Supply isn't just woke-free on paper. They fought the war and won it. In June 2024, after Starbuck's pressure campaign exposed their DEI bureaucracy, TSCO became the first Fortune 300 company in American history to fully roll back ESG goals, eliminate every DEI role, end HRC participation, kill Pride sponsorships, and withdraw their carbon emissions targets. Not a quiet web-page edit — a public, written corporate surrender.
The Buy Woke Free score: 10/100 (Mildly Woke). That residual 10 reflects holdover policies that take time to fully unwind, not active activism. For a 49-state retailer with $14 billion in revenue, that's an A+ in the post-2024 landscape. Shop with confidence.
2. Rural King — Privately Owned, Gun-Friendly, No Apologies
Headquartered in Mattoon, Illinois, Rural King is privately owned and operates more than 130 stores across the rural Midwest and South. They sell firearms in-store, hand out free coffee and popcorn at the door, and have never sponsored a Pride parade in their 65-year history. No HRC scorecard, no ESG report, no corporate DEI officer. Just farm supplies, ammo, and Carhartt.
3. Atwoods Ranch & Home — Family-Owned Since 1960
Atwoods is a privately held, family-run chain with roots in Enid, Oklahoma. In 2022 they expanded by acquiring 73 Orscheln Farm & Home stores from the Bohaty family — a generational handoff between two patriot-friendly Midwest operators. Atwoods doesn't file an HRC score because it doesn't trade publicly and doesn't apologize for that. Their store mix — work boots, hunting gear, livestock feed, fence wire — tells you exactly who their customer is.
4. Bomgaars — Iowa Family Business, 121 Stores Strong
Founded in 1952 in Sioux Center, Iowa, Bomgaars now operates 121 stores across nine Midwest and Mountain West states. Still owned and operated by the Bomgaars family. They sponsor 4-H, FFA, rodeos, and county fairs — not pride parades or BLM marches. If you live in farm country and you've never set foot in one, you're missing out.
5. Theisen's Home Farm Auto — Christian Values, Employee-Owned
Theisen's, founded in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1927, is now 100% employee-owned and operates 28 stores across Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Their corporate mission statement explicitly references serving "the rural lifestyle" and they have never participated in HRC's Corporate Equality Index. Employee ownership means the workers themselves — not Wall Street ESG funds — decide what the company sponsors.
6. Ace Hardware — Cooperative Model, 5,500 Locally Owned Stores
Ace Hardware is not a corporation in the Lowe's or Home Depot sense — it's a retailer-owned cooperative with more than 5,500 independently owned locations. Each store is owned by your neighbor, not a Greenwich hedge fund. While Ace's corporate office in Oak Brook does carry a corporate footprint (and you should still check your local store), the cooperative model means most stores reflect the values of the small-business owners running them. In conservative communities, that means American flags out front, no Pride displays, and a willingness to help you find the right gasket without a 14-page diversity statement.
7. Blain's Farm & Fleet — Privately Held, Midwest Roots
Blain's Farm & Fleet operates 44 stores across Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan and remains privately held by the Blain family since its founding in 1955. They've publicly stayed out of the culture wars, focused on price, selection, and customer service. No HRC index, no ESG report, no woke marketing campaigns. Just farm supplies, automotive parts, and the kind of clerk who actually knows what aisle the carburetor cleaner is in.
What About John Deere Alternatives?
If you're shopping mowers, tractors, or zero-turns, you don't have to feed the Deere machine. Kubota (Japanese-owned, virtually no DEI footprint in U.S. operations), Bad Boy Mowers (Arkansas family business, openly conservative ownership), and Spartan Mowers (Batesville, Arkansas) all build serious commercial-grade equipment without the activist baggage. Bad Boy in particular has been a frequent target of left-wing media for its founder's political donations — which is exactly why patriot buyers love them.
The Bottom Line
The big-box DEI rollbacks of 2024 and 2025 were real, but they were also defensive — these companies didn't change their values, they changed their wording. The corporate giving, the political contributions, and the C-suite ideology that built those policies in the first place are still in place. Lowe's at 64, Home Depot at 56, and John Deere at 59 will earn their way down those scores when they earn them, not when their PR team renames a webpage.
Tractor Supply, Rural King, Atwoods, Bomgaars, Theisen's, Ace Hardware, and Blain's earned your business the old-fashioned way — by never picking the fight in the first place. Send your hardware dollars to the people who never lectured you.
Browse the full Buy Woke Free brand database to check the score of your favorite retailer before your next big project.