Mignon Clyburn reflects on legacy as public interest 'champion' at Federal Communications Commission

Commissioner Mignon Clyburn of the Federal Communications Commission said she had been thinking about leaving for some time. By the end of 2018, term limit rules would have forced her out anyway. But the final decision, announced during a commission hearing, was spontaneous. "I was not 100 percent sure when I woke up this morning that this was the day," she said. "But I think it's the right time for me and it's a good time to have a reset to allow someone else to come in and pass that baton."

When Clyburn was first nominated, Gigi Sohn, who worked as an adviser for former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, said many advocates in the public interest community were suspicious of her because she had previously been on South Carolina's Public Service Commission, which is tasked with regulating the state's utilities. "From the get-go, she acknowledged that suspicion and basically said, 'I'm going to prove you wrong,'" said Sohn, who is now a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy. "I don't think she acted the way she acted or voted the way she voted to prove us all wrong," Sohn added. "I think she is a person who cares deeply about vulnerable populations — the poor, the imprisoned, communities of color — and she really used her pulpit there to represent the underrepresented."