Obama Names Two FCC Nominees

Story by Radio World

President Obama has named the people he plans to nominate as incoming commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission.

They are Ajit Varadaraj Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel, succeeding Meredith Attwell Baker and Michael Copps, respectively. Their confirmation would return the panel to its full count of five members.

Both have worked at the FCC before.

Republican Ajit Varadaraj Pai is a partner in the litigation department of Jenner & Block. Prior to that he worked in the Office of the General Counsel at the FCC, where he was deputy general counsel, associate general counsel and special advisor to the general counsel.

Previously, he served as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights and as senior counsel at the Office of Legal Policy at the Justice Department. Pai also served as deputy chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, and as associate general counsel at Verizon Communications.

Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel is the senior communications counsel for the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, working for Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV since 2009, and previously for Sen. Daniel Inouye.

Before that she worked at the FCC from 1999 to 2007, as legal advisor and then senior legal advisor to Copps, legal counsel to the bureau chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau and attorney-advisor in the Policy Division of the Common Carrier Bureau. Earlier she was a communications associate at Drinker Biddle and Reath.