Political Integrity Project

The Political Integrity Project (PIP) is a Washington, DC-based political watchdog and candidate-accountability organisation founded in 2025 by Daniel Lobo-Lewis and Nico Agosta. Its stated mission is to build "an anti-corruption coalition of candidates, voters, and creators who work tirelessly to hold politicians accountable to the people." In its first year PIP grew from a social media presence into a publicly available digital accountability infrastructure tracking congressional stock trades, corporate campaign donations, and Super PAC spending across every competitive federal race. Its entry into the make-AI-good corpus is anchored by the AI PACT, launched August 2026, which engages voters as a non-AI public in AI governance through a candidate pledge mechanism that makes AI accountability a legible electoral issue.

The Integrity Index

PIP's core product is the Integrity Index, a continuously updated public database that grades every member of Congress on four anti-corruption commitments: rejecting corporate PAC money during their tenure; committing to ban personal stock trading while in office; pledging not to pass through the revolving door into lobbying after leaving Congress; and supporting the overturning of Citizens United. As of September 2026 the Index is tracking 87,348 stock trades and has graded more than 2,380 candidates across the 2026 cycle. The database is free to all users — journalists, campaign workers, and ordinary voters — and applies identical methodology regardless of party affiliation. Companion tools launched alongside the Index include a California gubernatorial race money tracker (CAGOVTRACKER.COM, tracking $323M+ raised in the 2026 race) and a Trump Cabinet Tracker monitoring cabinet members' financial holdings in real time.

The Political Integrity Pledge

Alongside the Index, PIP administers the Political Integrity Pledge — a candidate commitment mechanism with three binding elements: no personal stock trading while serving in Congress; no corporate PAC donations during a campaign or term; and no post-office lobbying employment. As of PBS NewsHour coverage in 2026, approximately 90 challengers and seven sitting lawmakers had signed the pledge; by September 2026 PIP's own website reported 261 candidates as pledge signatories. Co-founder Lobo-Lewis has consistently framed the underlying issues — particularly congressional stock trading — as having "exceptionally high public approval ratings" across the political spectrum, the same voter-popularity logic that later underpins the AI Pact.

The AI PACT

On August 26, 2026, PIP launched the AI PACT — the AI Pledge for Accountability and Corporate Transparency — extending its candidate accountability model into artificial intelligence governance. The AI Pact asks congressional, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates to commit publicly to five positions:

1. No data center giveaways — ending tax breaks and special public subsidies for AI data centre construction
2. Mandatory AI safety reviews — requiring independent safety evaluations before powerful AI models are deployed commercially
3. An AI dividend — requiring AI companies to share a portion of productivity gains with the workers displaced or affected by automation
4. Accountability for AI companies — making AI companies legally liable for harms caused by their products rather than shielding them from litigation
5. No bailouts for big AI — opposing any government rescue of AI companies that deploy unsafe or harmful systems

By September 2026 more than 30 candidates from 14 states had signed, including Florida Senate Democratic nominee Angie Nixon, California candidate Connie Chan (running to succeed retiring former Speaker Nancy Pelosi), Texas gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, Dr. Adam Hamawy (New Jersey's 12th District), Melat Kiros (Colorado's First District), and Mike Croley (Tennessee's Sixth District). The signatories include 17 Democrats and independent Dan Osborn, who is challenging Republican Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska — a populist candidacy that illustrates the cross-partisan voter appeal PIP is attempting to mobilise.

PIP's theory of the AI Pact is explicitly electoral: "the only way to keep this industry in check is by electing politicians willing to hold it accountable." The voter engagement mechanism is central to the initiative: PIP collects email addresses and zip codes from members of the public who support the organisation's AI accountability approach, building a pressure-and-accountability constituency that candidates are measured against at the ballot box. PIP frames all five AI Pact commitments as universally popular among voters across the political spectrum — a positioning backed by an Emerson College survey finding that 63 percent of respondents opposed data centre construction in or near their communities.

Founders

Daniel Lobo-Lewis, who co-founded PIP in 2025, had brief prior stints in the Biden White House and on Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign before launching the project. Nico Agosta co-founded the organisation alongside Lobo-Lewis. Together they grew PIP from a social media account into a national database operation tracking hundreds of congressional races. The organisation operates through a PAC structure — Political Integrity PAC — accepting small-dollar public donations and explicitly declining corporate funding, maintaining the independence from industry its methodology requires.

Position in the movement

The Political Integrity Project brings the electoral channel into the make-AI-good corpus's coverage of how accountability pressure reaches AI. Where most organisations in this corpus work through litigation, legislation, regulatory advocacy, or civil-society organizing, PIP pursues AI accountability through voters and elections: it grades candidates publicly, asks them to make visible commitments, and mobilises a voter sign-up base that turns AI limits into an identifiable ballot-box issue. The five AI Pact commitments specifically address structural economic and governance conditions — data centre subsidies, worker displacement, legal liability, government bailouts — that span the concerns of labor advocates, environmental groups, and consumer advocates, giving the Pact a cross-coalition reach beyond the AI-native policy community. The voter-engagement model — making AI policy visible, assessable, and consequential at the ballot — is the mechanism that earns PIP a place in this corpus alongside the litigators, legislators, and organizers the graph tracks.