President Joe Biden’s nominee to join the Federal Communications Commission, Gigi Sohn, has withdrawn from consideration after over a year of debate on her candidacy and attacks from the broadband industry she would have regulated.
Biden nominated Sohn in October 2021 to fill the FCC’s vacant fifth seat and break its 2-2 deadlock between Republican and Democratic commissioners. That stalemate has prevented the agency from acting on issues like media ownership or holding a vote to bring back net neutrality, which was one Biden’s campaign promises.
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Over the course of 16 months, Sohn faced three Senate committee hearings, ads attacking her partisanship and wavering support from Democrats, and still wasn’t close to securing enough votes to be confirmed.
Sohn, a 30-year public interest advocate and former Democratic FCC official, decried the “legions of cable and media industry lobbyists” who brought “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks on my character and my career,” she said in a statement provided to The Washington Post.
With the FCC remaining deadlocked, Sohn lamented that Americans will lose out on access to broadband internet regardless of where they live, including rural Americans underserved by the FCC’s Universal Service programs.
“It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators,” Sohn said.
Conservative groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars putting up billboards and airing attack ads in states with Democrats who had been wavering on supporting Sohn’s candidacy, The Washington Post reported. On Tuesday, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced he would vote against Sohn, saying in a statement that “the FCC must remain above the toxic partisanship that Americans are sick and tired of, and Ms. Sohn has clearly shown she is not the person to do that.” Shortly after, Sohn said she was withdrawing.
During a White House press briefing on Tuesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre praised Sohn’s talent and years of public service on behalf of Americans, but also noted that the administration isn’t announcing another candidate at this time.
“We appreciate Gigi Sohn’s candidacy for this important role,” Jean-Pierre said. “She would’ve brought tremendous intellect and experience, which is why she was why the president nominated her in the first place.”
