Fifth FTC Commissioner To Get Nomination Vote

The Federal Trade Commission looks like it will finally get its fifth member.

The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled a hearing for late Monday—start time 5:49 p.m.—for a vote on a group of nominations including that of Terrell McSweeny. The FTC is currently at a 2-2 political tie.

McSweeny, along with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Michael O'Rielly, had been among the nominations that ran into delays last year as Congress focused on the budget and the shut-down interrupted voting schedules—and in the case of Wheeler (and O'Rielly by association), Sen. Ted Cruz's concerns.

McSweeny, a Democrat, is filling the unexpired term of former chairman Jon Leibowitz, who exited in March.

She has been a domestic policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and a former attorney with the Justice Department and at O'Melveny & Myers.

Along with O'Rielly, she was initially scheduled to get a nomination vote in the committee Oct. 3, but that went by the boards when the government shut down Oct. 1. Unlike O'Rielly, who got a fast-track vote out of the committee paired with Wheeler, singleton McSweeny's vote was held over until this year.

She is widely expected to be confirmed.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.