FCC nominee Gigi Sohn bows out amid right-wing attacks: report

07 March 2023

President Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Federal Communications Commission withdrew her name from consideration on Tuesday amid ongoing character assassination by right-wing media, lobbyists, and lawmakers.

Gigi Sohn told The Washington Post in an exclusive interview that the "unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks" that labeled her as "extreme" and "partisan" despite her moderate résumé forced her to turn down Biden's offer.

"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 to the Post. “And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that.”

But the criticisms of Sohn were not only coming from Republicans. The Post noted that United States Senator Joe Manchin (D-Wet Virginia) accused Sohn of harboring "partisan alliances with far-left groups," adding that "especially now, 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."

The Post further explained that "conservative groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking Sohn as partisan and extreme, leading a campaign focused in states of several moderate Democrats, who were already on the fence on Sohn's nomination. 'Gigi Sohn is too extreme for the FCC,' read one billboard in Las Vegas, plastered with Sohn's face and a link to a website for the American Accountability Foundation, a group that has opposed Biden's nominees. The AAF and another conservative nonprofit, the Center for a Free Economy, placed more than $200,000 in Facebook ads opposing Sohn."

The White House, meanwhile, respected Sohn's decision.

"She would have brought tremendous intellect and experience," Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, "which is why the president nominated her in the first place."

The Post's full article is available here (subscription required).

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