DeMint Departure Leaves Thune Senior Senate Commerce Republican

Thune becomes the highest-seniority Republican on the committee. He’s a likely candidate to become ranking member next Congress, Capitol Hill and industry officials said. Thune declined comment on whether he could become committee ranking member, saying only: “There is a process for these assignments that will play out and I look forward to discussing this development with my colleagues on the Commerce Committee.” Committee roles are generally determined via seniority, but Republicans vote on their chairmen and ranking members, and could theoretically choose someone else, an industry source said. The hierarchy for the returning GOP committee members is: Sens. Thune, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Roy Blunt of Missouri, John Boozman of Arkansas, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Marco Rubio of Florida, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Dean Heller of Nevada.

Thune is the ranking member of the Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, of the Finance Subcommittee on International Trade and of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Energy Science and Technology. He was recently reelected chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, which has duties including electing party leaders and approving committee assignments. Senate Republican Conference rules permit its chairman to serve as a full committee ranking member, a spokeswoman said. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., wished DeMint well and looks forward to working with whomever Republicans select as ranking member in the 113th Congress, he said. “I know the Commerce Committee will continue to work in a bipartisan manner to create economic growth, invest in our future, and protect consumers."

The tenor of the committee’s work on telecom issues would be substantially different with Thune as ranking member, a Republican industry lobbyist said. “Thune is a conservative but he is not as outspoken as DeMint. He is more collegial and will likely govern in a similar way as Kay Bailey Hutchison. In that sense it is good news for Rockefeller.” Thune “has a long history of thoughtful and constructive leadership on commerce committee issues,” said Amy Mehlman, a Republican telecom lobbyist at Mehlman Capitol Strategies.

Thune has relatively mainstream Republican views on telecom regulation and is unlikely to take as aggressive an approach to deregulation as DeMint, analysts and lobbyists said. Thune was “on board with Republican leadership on net neutrality and opposing regulatory efforts to reclassify broadband as a telecom service,” said analyst Paul Glenchur of Potomac Research Group. “He has been very supportive of the wireless carriers’ agenda to try to get more spectrum reallocated from government to commercial use. So I see him as having pretty mainstream views.” Thune has “typically followed the Republican line,” said a former Republican Senate Commerce staffer who now works for the telecom industry. “He was always mindful of the chairman and the ranking member and ensuring that he wasn’t going too far off line.”

On spectrum and broadband issues, Thune’s leadership will likely reflect the needs of his rural North Dakota constituency, the former Republican Senate Commerce staffer said. “I think he will be looking at rural America and try to figure out ways for his constituents to have all the services that urban consumers have,” he said. “He will take more of a Republican approach and try to find ways that economically incentivize public companies to invest in rural American and build out broadband.” Thune will likely push for long-term reform of the spectrum allocation process to bring more bandwidth to market, the former staffer said. Thune and staff “spent a lot of time talking about spectrum issues and the fact that the federal government holds a large portion of that spectrum,” he said. This week the Senate passed a Thune amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that urged government stakeholders to work with the NTIA to reallocate and share spectrum bands that are occupied by federal users like Defense. Thune will likely show some interest in reforming the Telecom Act, Republican sources said.

The committee minority will lose an outspoken advocate for deregulation of telecom, analysts said. “DeMint was ready to stake out a very deregulatory stance on a Telecom Act update,” said Guggenheim Securities’s Paul Gallant. “So his departure is a bit of a setback for the cable and phone companies that want a long-term ‘hands-off-the-Internet’ bill from Congress.” DeMint introduced the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act (S-2008) to remove Telecom Act mandates on carriage and purchase of certain broadcast signals by cable and satellite companies, repeal retransmission consent and compulsory license provisions and end media ownership law. DeMint wrote S-492, which aims to rewrite the Communications Act to prohibit federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

There’s “no question” the cable industry lost a strong advocate for reforming the multichannel video programming distributor market, said a Republican telecom lobbyist. The Senate and Commerce Committee will lose a “powerful voice on telecom/media deregulation and a fierce Net Neutrality critic that perhaps will now be channeled through the Heritage Foundation,” analyst Jeff Silva of Global Advisors wrote. “At the end of the day, though, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller will continue to set the agenda on telecom and media matters in that chamber.”