Senator Jesse Helms, fresh from torpedoing one high-profile Clinton administration nominee, is threatening to block the nomination of William Kennard to head the Federal Communications Commission, The New York Times reported today.
The paper said the North Carolina Republican is targeting Kennard, the FCC's general counsel for four years, because of dissatisfaction with the agency's dealings with Zebulon Lee, a broadcaster involved in licensing fights over several North Carolina radio stations.
The paper said the North Carolina Republican wants Kennard's assurance that he will help Lee, and has asked Kennard for details about his role in the disputes.
A Senate Commerce Committee is to vote Wednesday on the nomination. Helms is not a member of the committee, and thus would have to act through colleagues on the panel if he wants to stop Kennard.
Should he decide to wage such a fight, Helms could provoke a political battle far uglier and costlier than his recently concluded tangle with former Massachusetts governor William Weld, President Clinton's former nominee to become ambassador to Mexico. Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, refused to hold a confirmation hearing for Weld, a moderate Republican, because of Weld's declarations of support for medicinal marijuana use.
Most of the Senate's GOP colleagues went along with Helms - a notable exception was Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who threatened to waylay North Carolina farm programs in his role as head of the Agriculture Committee - but it's unlikely they would in Kennard's case.
First, Kennard enjoys wide support for his performance as FCC counsel. Under his guidance, the commission has begun prevailing far more often in court challenges to its rulemaking - it wins an average of four out of five cases, as opposed to three of five before he took over. Second, he talked the right talk - competition is good, regulation is bad - in his public statements, and appears sensitive to congressional demands that the commission take steps to streamline the process of introducing competitors into phone, cable TV, and other markets under the terms of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Third, the reigning party in the White House has the privilege of appointing three of five FCC commission members. The Helms move potentially contravenes that agreement.
And last, Helms would be interfering with an important historical footnote - Kennard is the first African American nominee to head the FCC, a position far more important to the life of the country than, say, ambassador to Mexico.
