The Federal Communications Commission has space on its executive floor for five commissioners and their staffs – but at the moment, space for two is vacant. At the FCC website, Michael Copps has taken his place at the top of the list of former commissioners.
The three current commissioners are Chairman Julius Genachowski (D), Robert McDowell (R) and Mignon Clyburn (D).
For the time being, FCC leadership is admirably close to reflecting the ethnic population breakdown of the nation as a whole, but comes up very short in terms of reflecting the percentages of men and women in the general population – or course, with only three warm bodies, getting the balance right on gender is an utter impossibility.
It is unknown if and when Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) will release his hold on the pending nominations of Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Pai. For those keeping a demographic scorecard, the resulting breakdown when the two nominees are seated will be 60-40 on breakdowns including party, ethnicity and gender.
We thought we’d take a brief trip down memory lane and list all of the commissioners who served any time after the advent of Y2K:
* Michael J. Copps (D) May 2001-December 2011
* Meredith Attwell Baker (R) July 2009-June 2011
* Jonathan S. Adelstein (D) December 2002-June 2009
* Kevin J. Martin (R) July 2001-January 2009
* Deborah Taylor Tate (R) December 2005-January 2009
* Kathleen Q. Abernathy (R) May 2001-December 2005
* Michael Powell (R) November 1997-March 2005
* Gloria Tristani (D) November 1997-September 2001
* Susan Ness (D) May 1994-May 2001
* Harold Furchtgott-Roth (R) November 1997-May 2001
* William E. Kennard (D) October 1997-January 2001
