Clyburn's challenge

President Obama's nomination of Mignon Clyburn to one of the two open Democratic seats on the Federal Communications Commission has set off alarms within the "net roots" community, which seeks telecom policies that limit corporate control of access to the Internet.

There are many in the grass-roots movement who view the 46-year-old Clyburn as a patronage pick and characterize her as a reliable ally of telecom providers and utilities during her decade-long tenure on the Public Service Commission of South Carolina. The oldest daughter of House Majority Whip James Clyburn, she also chairs the Washington Action Committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

Sascha Meinrath, research director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation, has been soliciting comments about Clyburn on his blog. Though he says he's keeping an "open mind," others in the net roots community he's talked to "behind closed doors" worry that Clyburn "will be a disaster for the public interest." Their concern, says Meinrath, who served on the Obama campaign's technology, media and telecom advisory committee, is a perception that she's "extremely tight" with the big phone and cable monopolies and will work at cross-purposes with Obama's agenda. "If this is true, President Obama will have really sold the public interest down the river," he says.

During his campaign, Obama endorsed "net neutrality," the notion that communications networks should not favor content or services offered by network operators by, for instance, carrying them at higher speeds than competing offerings from rival providers. Obama also has advocated wider deployment of high-speed Internet and other broadband communications in low-income and rural areas.

Clyburn graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1984. Before being elected to the PSC by the South Carolina General Assembly, she spent 14 years as publisher and general manager of the Coastal Times, a weekly newspaper in Charleston, S.C. Her father is the highest-ranking African American in Congress, which critics say gives her nomination the feel of an old-time patronage pick.

Rep. Clyburn was a primary supporter of Obama and continues to have ties to the Obama transition team. Jaime Harrison, who was floor director of the congressman's whip operation, was recently hired by Podesta Group, the lobbying firm founded by brothers John and Tony Podesta. John Podesta, who led Obama's transition team, is now chairman of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a Washington advocacy group for digital rights, is well aware of the grass-roots grumbling about Clyburn but says Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt. "She was chosen by the president, and we assume she has been told what his agenda is, and we hope she'll follow it."