Biden FCC pick drops out after over a year of attacks

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s pick to serve as a telecommunications regulator is withdrawing her nomination to the Federal Communications Commission after a bitter 16-month lobbying battle that blocked her appointment and opened her up to relentless personal attacks.

Gigi Sohn, a longtime public interest advocate and former Democratic FCC official who was first nominated by the White House in October 2021, said her decision to withdraw follows “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks” seeded by cable and media industry lobbyists. The opposition to Sohn catapulted the relatively low-profile position into the center of an unprecedented fight that included three Senate confirmation hearings, a series of ads, op-eds and a billboard criticizing Sohn as “extreme” and “partisan” amid dissection of her social media posts.

Sohn’s decision to bow out leaves the Biden administration’s ambitious internet agenda in limbo, continuing more than two years of deadlocking at the FCC. Biden came into office on promises to reverse a wave of deregulation during the Trump administration and commitments to restore Obama-era net neutrality protections. But the continued 2-2 split could imperil some of the administration’s key goals, as a historic amount of federal funding earmarked in the 2021 infrastructure law and pandemic relief packages is funneled into broadband access and affordability.

“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 in a statement shared exclusively with The Washington Post. “And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that.”

The collapse of Sohn’s nomination is a sign of the limits of the White House’s political power. The administration was unable to push Sohn’s nomination in a narrowly divided Senate. Shortly before Sohn announced her decision to withdraw, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., dealt a critical blow, announcing he would vote against her, accusing her of holding “partisan alliances with far-left groups.”