Verizon Hires Senate Commerce Staffer Shawn Bone to Handle Broadband

Shawn Bone, a senior telecommunications counsel for Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA), is joining Verizon on October 11 as its director of federal regulatory public policy. Bone, who has worked for Senate Commerce Democrats for more than nine years, will focus on broadband at Verizon. His departure will coincide with the exit of John Branscome, who served as the top Democratic staffer on Senate Commerce’s telecommunications subcommittee and will join Facebook’s federal policy team next month. Branscome and Bone frequently tag-teamed some of the biggest tech and telecommunications issues facing the panel, and they’ll now be formidably connected advocates for two of the mightiest industry giants their bosses oversaw. Their joint departure also fuels the brain drain at Senate Commerce, which had relied on the two aides’ work through multiple iterations of the committee. Some of Branscome and Bone’s former colleagues on the committee also left to join the Biden administration this year — Narda Jones and Chris Day, who now handle legislative affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Commerce Department, respectively.