from the dysfunction-junction dept

Several sources familiar with the nomination process tell me that the Biden Administration is not only planning to re-nominate Gigi Sohn to the FCC in 2023, but that Sohn still has the full support of the Administration and of Biden personally.

At points in 2022 it wasn’t entirely clear that team Biden had the political backbone to continue one of the sleazier fights in modern policy history (this recent Verge breakdown is a great read if you need catching up). But this renomination puts that debate to rest, and the reconstituted Senate in the wake of Warnock’s win in Georgia suggests that Sohn should have a far more promising 2023.

The telecom and media industry used every dirty trick in the lobbying playbook in 2022 to prevent Sohn from getting the 50 Senate confirmation votes needed. The result: the longest delay in seating an FCC Commissioner in U.S. history, despite Sohn’s bipartisan popularity and experience.

That’s in stark contrast to the late 2020 nomination and seating of Trump FCC pick Nathan Simington, which took less than 30 days from start to finish despite Simington having virtually no telecom experience.

Unlike the bullrush approach used to nominate and promote reformer Lina Khan to the FTC, Sohn wasn’t even nominated by the Biden administration until October of 2021, nine months into his first term. I’m told by several sources there was some (baseless) concern by key advisors that the “controversy” surrounding Sohn’s nomination would interfere with efforts to get the infrastructure bill across the finish line.

The delayed nomination gave the telecom industry ample runway to develop a coordinated smear campaign (pushed through a variety of industry-linked nonprofits) falsely accusing Sohn of being a radical enemy of cops, rural America, Hispanics, and free speech. The sleazy attacks were bipartisan, and included some help from former Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp.

The accusations were gibberish to anybody that actually knows Sohn, who in reality is popular across both sides of the aisle. But they functioned as intended: they provided the entire GOP with the flimsy rhetorical cover needed to do the telecom industry’s direct bidding. Which, contrary to a lot of pretense in the press and DC, is generally the position the GOP always takes on any issue of telecom and media policy (see: net neutrality, media consolidation, consumer rights, consumer privacy, etc.).

But the attacks provided the same flimsy cover for several key Senate Democrats, including Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Mastro, and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. Several sources tell me Kelly and Mastro will likely support Sohn with their contentious election battles in the rear-view mirror, though it’s equally likely Manchin will remain in stubborn, noncommittal opposition.

Enter Senator Rafael Warnock, whose election victory in Georgia should provide the 50 votes necessary to get over the hump… provided there’s no surprises. If Sohn backers can’t get Mastro and Kelly lined up, Sohn’s fate would require flipping a key Republican vote like Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.

The catch: with the renomination, the entire process needs to start over, meaning additional contentious hearings where GOP Senators get to pretend Sohn is an unhinged radical. If everything goes well, Sohn could still be seated by February or March. If everything doesn’t go well, and industry has its way, Sohn will face a gantlet of entirely new hearings where captured lawmakers push entirely new attacks.

That would give the Biden FCC a very short runway to push numerous policies (policies that can take up to 9 months to fully cook) ahead of the 2024 Presidential election. That means stuff like restoring net neutrality or media consolidation rules will likely be sidelined in favor of other more recent, politically safer priorities like improved broadband mapping, which looks to be an ugly mess in the making.

Again all of this dysfunction was by design: the telecom industry enjoyed a fully captured regulator for four years under Trump. Now, thanks to a few thousand dollars and some ethically-dodgy nonprofits, they successfully gridlocked the FCC for another two years.

That’s six straight years in which the nation’s top telecom and media regulator was either directly representing the interests of industry or mired in partisan gridlock because of industry lobbying. That’s six years of the FCC being unable to explore any policy considerations deemed even remotely controversial by industry giants and their GOP allies.

It may come as a surprise, but that’s not how healthy Democracies function. Holding telecom monopolies accountable has massive, bipartisan public appeal, yet corruption ensures it happens very rarely. So rarely, we can’t even field a fully staffed FCC because it might piss off Comcast.

Again, you’d be pretty hard pressed to find a more qualified and popular candidate to the FCC than Sohn. The problem is that unlike so many political DC animals, she’s an actual reformer genuinely interested in fixing problems. That’s a cardinal sin for telecom monopolies, who’d prefer to keep the FCC as feckless as humanly possible, for as long as humanly possible. Forever would be their preference.

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