Biden FCC nominee withdraws after a bruising lobbying battle

President 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.