Kyle Herrig

Kyle Herrig is an American Democratic political operative who founded the watchdog group Accountable.US in 2019 and served as its president until July 2023, when he became a senior advisor (Accountable.US). He is the founder and executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic-aligned research and rapid-response operation launched in 2022 to counter House Republican investigations (Politico).

Overview

Kyle Herrig has built his career inside the Democratic Party’s nonprofit advocacy ecosystem, moving from managing a major progressive fiscal sponsor to leading two nationally prominent watchdog-style organizations of his own (InfluenceWatch). Agence France-Presse has described him as “a lawyer and activist” (AFP). His public profile rests on two signature projects: Accountable.US, which he founded in 2019 and led as president for four years, and the Congressional Integrity Project, founded in 2022 to counter House Republican investigations (Accountable.US; Politico). Along the way, Herrig also served on the board of the watchdog group American Oversight, including a stint as its interim executive director in 2022 (InfluenceWatch).

Career across the progressive watchdog network

Before founding his own organization, Herrig served as managing director of the New Venture Fund from 2014 through 2019, according to the watchdog profile published by InfluenceWatch (InfluenceWatch). The New Venture Fund is a nonprofit managed by the philanthropic firm Arabella Advisors that fiscally sponsors progressive advocacy projects — a structure critics describe as a “dark money” conduit (InfluenceWatch). Within that network, Herrig acted as a spokesman for Allied Progress, the group’s consumer-finance project; in February 2019 he denounced the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rollback of an Obama-era payday-lending rule, saying regulators had “chosen to side with payday lenders over consumers” (InfluenceWatch). He also sat on the advisory board of Restore Public Trust, a New Venture Fund project formed in 2018 to scrutinize Trump administration cabinet officials; Herrig issued a statement for the group accusing Trump appointees of devising “a scheme to make the census less representative for all Americans” (InfluenceWatch). Both Allied Progress and Restore Public Trust were absorbed into Accountable.US by 2020 (InfluenceWatch).

In 2017, Herrig joined the board of directors of American Oversight, the watchdog group known for using public-records requests and lawsuits against Republican administrations, and he remained on the board as of 2023 (InfluenceWatch). From January through July 2022 he served as its interim executive director, between the departure of Austin Evers and the appointment of Heather Sawyer (InfluenceWatch).

In 2019, Herrig founded Accountable.US with a team of researchers and communications strategists and became its president, a role he held until July 2023 (Accountable.US). Upon his departure, former executive director Caroline Ciccone returned from the Biden-Harris administration to take the presidency, and Herrig remained with the organization as a senior advisor (Accountable.US).

In November 2022, Herrig unveiled the next phase of his career in a Politico interview: the relaunched Congressional Integrity Project, a multi-million-dollar hub designed to serve as the Democratic Party’s “leading war room” against anticipated House Republican investigations (Politico). He told Politico the project would “investigate the investigators, expose their political motivations and the monied special interests supporting their work,” assembling rapid-response teams, investigative researchers, and pollsters, with a paid media campaign to follow (Politico). The leadership team included longtime Democratic strategist Brad Woodhouse, communications specialist Leslie Dach, and former Biden aide Jeff Peck, and Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill had been briefed on the plans, according to a person familiar with them (Politico). Agence France-Presse, summarizing the same announcement, quoted Herrig saying the Republicans’ goal was “not to seek the truth but rather to smear Joe Biden and do the political bidding of Trump” (AFP).

The American Democracy Scorecard

In September 2022, Accountable.US unveiled the American Democracy Scorecard, which graded the nation’s top 100 corporations on their support for democracy, with two-thirds receiving failing marks (Capital & Main). The lowest scorer was AT&T, followed by Verizon, with Charter Communications and Comcast also among the ten lowest; telecommunications ranked as the worst industry overall (Capital & Main). Herrig personally wrote to AT&T chief executive John Stankey after the scorecard’s release: “While your company is currently failing to stand up for democracy, it is not too late to get your priorities straight and begin aligning your values with the values shared by most Americans” (Capital & Main). The scorecard rated companies against 14 criteria, including their pro-democracy statements, the transparency of their political-spending disclosures, and whether their PACs had donated to lawmakers who opposed voting-rights legislation or objected to certifying the 2020 presidential election (Capital & Main). Accountable.US reported that 33 of the 50 companies that had paused political giving to election objectors after January 6, 2021 eventually resumed those donations, and the group planned a six-figure digital media campaign aimed at executives, elected officials, and business-school students (Capital & Main).

Under scrutiny: the 2021 House Oversight inquiry

Accountable.US was not only a scrutinizer of others — in February 2021 it became the subject of a congressional inquiry itself (House Oversight Committee). On February 22, 2021, Representative Michael Cloud, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, wrote to Herrig demanding documents about two Accountable.US campaigns: the Campaign Against Corporate Complicity, run jointly with American Oversight, and Hate for Hire (House Oversight Committee). The letter accused the campaigns of seeking to “blacklist” former Trump administration officials from private-sector employment and demanded internal communications, the process used to select targeted individuals, and any communications with the Biden-Harris transition and administration by March 8, 2021, plus a staff briefing by March 1 (House Oversight Committee). The episode shows the watchdog’s tactics boomeranging: within two years of its founding, Herrig’s organization was itself facing document demands from the same congressional oversight machinery — a dimension the standard biographical sketches omit (House Oversight Committee).

Kyle Herrig’s roles at a glance

Period	Organization	Role
2014–2019	New Venture Fund	Managing director
2017–2023	American Oversight	Board member; interim executive director, Jan–Jul 2022
2018–2020	Restore Public Trust / Allied Progress	Advisory board member / spokesman
2019–Jul 2023	Accountable.US	Founder and president
Jul 2023–	Accountable.US	Senior advisor
2022–	Congressional Integrity Project	Founder and executive director

Frequently asked questions

Who is Kyle Herrig? Kyle Herrig is an American Democratic political operative who founded the watchdog group Accountable.US in 2019 and served as its president until July 2023 (Accountable.US). He is the founder and executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic-aligned research operation built to counter House Republican investigations (Politico). Agence France-Presse has described him as “a lawyer and activist” (AFP).

What is the Congressional Integrity Project? The Congressional Integrity Project is a Democratic-aligned nonprofit research and rapid-response operation relaunched in November 2022 (Politico). Founder Kyle Herrig told Politico it would “investigate the investigators” behind House Republican probes of the Biden administration, using researchers, pollsters, and paid media to put congressional Republicans “squarely on the defense” (Politico).

What did the American Democracy Scorecard find? In September 2022, Accountable.US graded the top 100 U.S. corporations against 14 democracy-related criteria; two-thirds received failing marks (Capital & Main). AT&T scored lowest, followed by Verizon, with Charter Communications and Comcast also near the bottom (Capital & Main). Accountable.US reported that 33 of the 50 companies that paused donations to election objectors later resumed them (Capital & Main).

Was Accountable.US ever investigated by Congress? In February 2021, House Oversight Republicans wrote to Herrig demanding internal documents about two Accountable.US campaigns — Campaign Against Corporate Complicity and Hate for Hire — accused in the letter of blacklisting former Trump officials from private employment (House Oversight Committee). No public record of Herrig’s response was found, so how the inquiry was resolved is not stated here.

When did Herrig leave the Accountable.US presidency? Accountable.US announced in 2023 that Caroline Ciccone would return from the Biden-Harris administration as its new president, succeeding Herrig, who had led the group since its 2019 founding (Accountable.US). Herrig praised Ciccone as a “passionate and committed progressive” and remained with the organization as a senior advisor (Accountable.US).

What this profile does not claim

This profile makes no claims about Kyle Herrig’s birth date, birthplace, education, family, or personal life — no source found documented any of them, and none are included here. His New Venture Fund tenure (managing director, 2014–2019) is documented only in a tier3 watchdog profile and has not been independently confirmed by a tier1 or tier2 source. His role at the Congressional Integrity Project beyond 2023 was not verified in the independent coverage found for this profile; the profile does not assert he still holds the post. The profile also does not claim how Accountable.US responded to the February 2021 House Oversight document demand, because no response was found in the public record. Finally, descriptions of Accountable.US, American Oversight, and the New Venture Fund are given in the terms their own documents and the cited coverage use; this profile does not adjudicate the “nonpartisan watchdog” versus “partisan advocacy” characterizations that supporters and critics attach to these groups.