President Joe Biden’s nominee to join the Federal Communications Commission, Gigi Sun, has dropped out after more than a year of debate over her candidacy and attacks from the broadband industry that she would have orchestrated.
Biden Sohn nominated in October 2021 to fill the FCC’s fifth vacant seat and break the 2-2 deadlock between the Republican and Democratic commissioners. This deadlock has prevented the agency from acting on issues such as media ownership or holding a vote to restore net neutrality, which was one of Biden’s campaign promises.
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Over the course of 16 months, Son faced three Senate committee hearings in which ads attacked her partisanship and backed away from Democrat support, and she wasn’t close to getting enough votes to be confirmed.
Sohn, a 30-year-old public interest advocate and former Democratic Federal Communications Commission official, decried “hordes of lobbyists in the cable industry and the media” who brought “cruel, dishonest, and ruthless attacks on my character and my career,” he said in a statement Submitted to The Washington Post.
With the FCC still deadlocked, Sohn lamented Americans’ loss of broadband Internet access no matter where they live, including rural Americans who are denied access to the FCC’s universal service programs.
“It is a sad day for our country and democracy when, with the help of unlimited dark money, the dominant industries can choose their regulators,” Sun said.
Conservative groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars putting up billboards and airing attack ads in states with Democrats reluctant to support Sohn’s candidacy, Washington Post mentioned. On Tuesday, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced he would vote against Son, saying in a statement that “the FCC must remain above the toxic partisanship that Americans are sick and tired of, and Ms. Soon has clearly shown that she is not the one to do so.” Soon after, Sun said she was withdrawing.
During a White House briefing on Tuesday, press secretary Karen Jean-Pierre praised Son’s talent and years of public service on behalf of Americans, but also noted that the administration is not advertising another nominee at this time.
“We appreciate the nomination of Gigi Son for this important role,” said Jean-Pierre. “She would have come with tremendous intelligence and experience, which is why I nominated her for the president in the first place.”
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