Biden Taps 'Seasoned Professionals' With Wheeler Ties for FCC Switchover
Everyone on the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris presidential transition’s FCC review team has ties to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and three are rumored candidates for chair next year. Named Monday were John Williams, senior counselor at the House Judiciary Committee; former Commissioner Mignon Clyburn; DLA Piper’s Smitty Smith, a former FCC and NTIA staffer; and Paul de Sa, former FCC official and analyst (see 2011160020). Industry experts said in interviews the members have unusually deep ties to the agency.
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Williams, Clyburn and Smith are seen as potential candidates as next chair under Biden, but being on the transition team could hurt their chances since it would look like self-dealing if any of them gets the nod, industry officials said. Wheeler was on the Obama transition team but didn’t become chairman until the second term, replacing Julius Genachowski. Smith has been campaigning behind the scenes for the chair and is believed to have Wheeler’s support, said communications lobbyists who follow Democratic politics. Clyburn was already seen as a potential chair contender in a Biden administration (see 2006170053), though her recent appointment to RingCentral’s board may hurt her prospects, the lobbyists said.
“I’m proud to have worked with all these folks,” Wheeler emailed. “You can credit their individual high quality and agency knowledge as the reason for their selection. Insofar as who becomes chairman, I’ve been saying that Washington’s favorite parlor game is like the weather: everyone talks about it, but it is ultimately determined by the convergence of forces over which no one has control.”
Williams’ House email account returned an automatic message saying he’s “currently on leave.” The other team members didn’t comment. All members of the Commerce and Justice departments' transition teams who answered our queries said they also were on leaves or otherwise taking off of their jobs. The FCC didn't comment on the transition.
Team members aren’t the policymakers but “the people preparing the ground for the policymakers,” said Kevin Werbach, a leader of the Obama team 12 years ago and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “This is a deeply experienced group, and a deeply diverse one, not just in terms of race and gender, although there certainly is that, but experience and professional background.” And "having someone who understands the Hill, and someone with deep technical knowledge, on the team will be valuable,” Werbach said. The FCC remains a small agency by employees and budget, he said: “That there are four transition officials suggests the importance that the Biden team puts on tech and communications policy.”
All have “deep FCC experience,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “That was not true of either the Trump transition team or the Obama transition team in 2008. Both the Obama team and the Trump team focused on policy. This is a team that knows where the bodies are buried and how the agency works.” Many are concerned about a loss of experienced civil service employees under President Donald Trump, he said. “The FCC was hit less hard than many other agencies, but the FCC did lose a fair number of important policy folks who either hit retirement age or opted not to work in a Trump administration,” he said: The new team will be able to tell “immediately if the new Biden administration will need to make staffing up a top priority, and if so, where in the agency that needs to happen.”
The Biden FCC will likely act “almost as a sequel to the Wheeler administration with regard to some of the more controversial proceedings at the Commission, most notable being broadband classification/net neutrality,” emailed R Street Institute Resident Fellow-Technology and Innovation Jeffrey Westling. Many issues important to current Chairman Ajit Pai will likely be a priority next year, he said. “There has been strong bipartisan support for making more radio frequencies available for both flexible use licenses and unlicensed operations, and the commission will be voting on a 5.9 GHz item on Wednesday.”
The Biden FCC team’s members "all know a lot of people” and will be able to draw on that pool to make recommendations for commission jobs, said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Broadband and Spectrum Policy Director Doug Brake. Their deep expertise is likely to aid the team if Trump’s administration continues to delay formal recognition of Biden as president-elect, Brake said: “These folks know each other well and probably already have a sense of what priorities and directions” a majority-Democratic FCC will likely want to pursue. “Once they’re able to get in there and have conversations with the current FCC team and get a sense of where different items are,” there “won’t be quite as much strife over this area of the transition as there will be in other parts of the government,” he said.