Politically Direct Summer 2009: Senate Approves FCC Nominations

July 28, 2009 — The Senate has given the go-ahead to President Obama’s first two nominees to the Federal Communications Commission, approving Democrat Julius Genachowski as FCC Chairman, and Republican Robert McDowell to serve his second term with the Commission. Both nominees were approved as part of a package of nominees for executive agencies.

The President has also made two additional nominations to the FCC to fill its remaining vacancies: Attwell Baker has been nominated to serve for the remainder of former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s term, which expires June 30, 2011; and Mignon Clyburn has been nominated to succeed former FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, whose five-year term expires July 1, 2012.

The President, in an apparent attempt to move the nominations as quickly as possible through the Senate approval process, has made his nominations pairing a Democrat, Clyburn, with a Republican, Baker – a strategy which succeeded with the nominations of Genachowski and McDowell,

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