Pete Marovich/The New York Times via AP
Gigi Sohn testifies before the Senate Commerce Committee, February 9, 2022.
For the second consecutive year, President Joe Biden plans to nominate Gigi Sohn as the fifth commissioner to the Federal Communications Commission, according to White House officials. The Biden administration will announce a slew of other renominations to top agency spots in the coming weeks, including former Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti as ambassador to India, Phil Washington to head the Federal Aviation Administration, and Danny Werfel to lead the Internal Revenue Service.
Sohn’s stalled confirmation, though, has been unprecedented, setting an FCC record for nomination delays. The telecommunications industry has been clear in its intention to obstruct Sohn’s path to the agency at all costs.
Many independent commissions in Washington are bipartisan, with the president’s party afforded three seats on a five-member panel, for example, and the minority party two. The obstruction of Sohn has kept the FCC evenly split, 2-2, between Democrats and Republicans.
Without a working majority at the agency, Democrats can’t move forward on ambitious policy goals, such as reimplementing net neutrality protections or imposing new rules to curb media consolidation. The industry has a financial incentive to keep the FCC hamstrung, too. Because of the deadlock, for example, the commission can’t fine cellphone operators for sharing consumer location data in outstanding violations worth $200 million.
Telecommunications is one of the most powerful forces in Washington, spending an estimated $320,000 a day on lobbying. Led by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, the telecom giants doled out millions over the past year to oppose Sohn and made tactical hires to target key swing votes in the Senate. This past year, Comcast retained Sen. Joe Manchin’s former top aide as a lobbyist and brought on a retired Arizona state lawmaker close to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
To further tie up Democratic votes, Comcast paid former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle’s firm to lobby explicitly on Sohn’s nomination. Another ex-Democratic senator turned lobbyist, Heidi Heitkamp, also used her PAC One Country Project to take out a $250,000 ad campaign impugning Sohn’s record on rural broadband access.
Business interests have found a helping hand in Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats willing to obstruct Sohn’s confirmation. Over the past year, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) have remained hesitant to offer Sohn their support. With the midterm elections squared away, and Kelly and Cortez Masto at least safely re-elected for six years, Sohn’s supporters are confident that there’s now more room to gather needed votes. And after newly elected Sen. John Fetterman’s win in Pennsylvania, Democrats also have an extra vote to work with even if Manchin never comes around on Sohn.
Senate Democrats are expected to push for a confirmation vote on Sohn either in February, before the legislative agenda gets backed up, or later in the spring.
Even with a split commission, the FCC has been able to make progress on several issues. In a unanimous vote, the agency curbed a particularly egregious practice by internet service providers that involved paying kickbacks to landlords to deny competitive service options to tenants. The agency also adopted rules that require broadband providers to label at the point of sale the full list prices and speed for the service.
For the agenda in this year ahead, however, the agency will need its fifth commissioner. As mandated by the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the FCC in December took the first steps to set rules for digital discrimination, which would penalize telecom corporations for failing to invest in low-income areas. Those rules could likely fall short without Sohn’s vote at the commission.
This month, the FCC has also begun the process of setting the broadband map, a detailed topography outlining the country’s digital divide. The commission’s vote on the map has typically been 3-2 in the past because of how consequential the map is for distributing broadband funding. States, flush with broadband cash this year from the infrastructure bill, can’t use any of those funds until the FCC finalizes the map.
