Nineteen Republican U.S. senators voted with Democrats in December to confirm President Joe Biden’s pick for chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Jessica Rosenworcel.

It’s the kind of bipartisanship that has long existed for reasonable presidential appointees. Rosenworcel resides on the political left, but she falls within the mainstream of Democratic politics – much like Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper. But Biden’s pick to fill a vacancy on the FCC, Gigi Sohn, is a far-left extremist. She’s of the ilk that is driving the Democratic Party off an electoral cliff. Not only has Sohn advocated for censorship of media outlets with which she disagrees, but she also comes to her nomination ethically compromised beyond repair.

The full Senate will soon take up Sohn’s appointment, and we urge Sens. Hickenlooper and Bennet to join with Republicans in opposition to giving this flawed pick any power over the media, technology and telecommunications in this country.

Sohn has made unhinged statements about news outlets that she views as political enemies. “For all my concerns about #Facebook, I believe that Fox News has the most negative impact on our democracy, it’s state-sponsored propaganda, with few if any opposing viewpoints. Where’s the hearing about that?” she tweeted in 2020. Sohn earlier accused Fox of “destroying democracy & electing autocrats.”

Sohn has also advocated for the FCC to go after the licenses of Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns numerous television stations affiliated with Fox, as well as CBS, NBC and ABC. “I say the FCC should look at whether Sinclair is qualified to be a broadcast licensee at all,” she tweeted.

It’s worth noting that Hickenlooper and Bennet have appeared on Fox News, as has Gov. Jared Polis as recently as this year. Nearly every Fox News program features advocates from both sides of left-right disputes. The company has an impressive slate of left-leaning contributors, several of whom worked in Democratic presidential administrations.

Principled Democrats should oppose such unbridled lust for censorship by a potential FCC commissioner, regardless of who sits in the White House.

Sohn previously served as a director of Locast, a company that charged customers to view uninterrupted programming via pirated broadcast signals over the internet. In 2021, a federal judge ordered Locast to pay $32 million in damages to a consortium of broadcasters for violating the Copyright Act. Yes, Biden’s pick to regulate the airwaves worked at a high level in a company with a business model of stealing broadcast signals.

Conveniently – one day after Biden nominated Sohn as an FCC commissioner – Locast secured a legal settlement with the broadcasters slashing damages owed them to a mere $700,000.

In a desperate attempt at damage control over the stench of quid pro quo in the Locast scandal, Sohn promised in January to temporarily recuse herself from some broadcast regulatory issues if confirmed. Those would include “matters involving retransmission consent or television broadcast copyright for the first three years of her term.”

All well and good for the broadcasters, but it only provides more evidence that Sohn is too ethically compromised and too politically motivated to be anywhere near the levers of regulatory power.

We urge Bennet and Hickenlooper to reject Gigi Sohn for FCC commissioner.

Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board