Life in the minority at the FCC

Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is nearly two years into her second stint as a Democratic member of the FCC. Her first five-year term was during the Obama administration before she left the agency briefly when her confirmation for a new term was held up amid Senate bickering. Prior to being confirmed in 2012, Rosenworcel was a policy counsel at the Senate Commerce Committee, first under the late Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) then former Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV). Prior to that, she got her start as a staffer for the FCC in 1999. Since the Trump administration began and Rosenworcel’s Republican colleague Ajit Pai took over as chairman, many of the achievements of the prior FCC have been rolled back and its authority has been worn away by an ambitious deregulatory agenda. 

As a member of the minority on the current commission, Commissioner Rosenworcel is limited in the ways she can fight back. Still, she says she thinks it’s important to speak out constantly about where she thinks the agency is falling short. “It’s not easy being in the minority,” said Michael Copps, who served as a Democratic commissioner from 2001 to 2011 and is Rosenworcel’s former boss. “She has shown some inventive and creative ways to get the word out. I think her voice is being heard even though she is in the minority. I think you folks in the media go to her because you know she knows what she’s talking about.”