By David Shepardson and Diane Bartz
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee said Tuesday it will not move forward with votes on nominees for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the wake of the illness of a Democratic senator who could cast a critical vote.
The panel was scheduled to vote on Gigi Sohn, a former senior aide to Tom Wheeler who served as FCC chairman under former President Barack Obama to serve on the FCC and Alvaro Bedoya, founding director of Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology, to serve on the FTC.
A spokeswoman for the committee said the nominations were being pulled from Wednesday’s hearing “to take into consideration the need for all Democratic votes in order to move certain nominees forward.” The panel is also delaying a vote on the nomination of Mary Boyle to serve on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The panel is divided 14-14 between Republicans and Democrats and Democratic U.S. Senator Ben Ray Lujan, a committee member, has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke and is expected to make a full recovery.
More than a year after President Joe Biden took office, the FCC remains divided 2-2 between Republicans and Democrats and it has been unable to move forward on some issues like restoring net neutrality rules that were repealed under President Donald Trump.
The panel is still set vote on the nominations of some other nominees, including Steven Cliff to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which has not had a Senate-confirmed leader since January 2017 and several other Transportation Department nominees.
In December, the panel deadlocked 14-14 on Bedoya’s FTC nomination. After the full Senate failed to take up the nomination before the end of the year, Biden renominated Bedoya, a law professor and privacy advocate.
The FTC enforces antitrust law and pursues allegations of deceptive advertising, including scams.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Diane Bartz; Editing by Sandra Maler)