Caroline Crenshaw’s SEC Exit Leaves Behind an All-Republican Commission

There goes another one.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking thin after Caroline Crenshaw stepped down last Friday. A commissioner since 2020, Crenshaw was a persistent crypto skeptic and the last remaining Democrat among the SEC’s top ranks. “She has been a steadfast advocate for the agency’s mission — demonstrating clarity of purpose and generosity of spirit,” Chair Paul Atkins and commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda said in a joint statement. Her departure follows Democrat Jaime Lizárraga’s exit in January 2025.

Instead of five commissioners, the agency is now down to an all-Republican trio. Commissioners are appointed by the president with Senate confirmation, and no more than three may belong to the same political party. While there appears to be no firm deadline to fill the two vacancies, there are a few possible replacements, and a lingering question of whether it even matters who gets the seats.

“Pundits of the SEC like to say the bipartisan construct somehow ennobles the system, making it better and providing more thoughtful debate,” said longtime securities lawyer Bill Singer. “Whoever nominates the chair winds up putting the commission three to two.”

Just Sending 100,000 Emails

Crenshaw’s exit wasn’t a surprise. Her first term ended in June 2024, but she stayed on under a holdover provision. That same year, President Joe Biden nominated her for a second term running through 2029. The Senate Banking Committee never advanced the nomination, though, amid intense opposition from the crypto industry and allied lawmakers. Supporters of the Stand With Crypto nonprofit sent more than 100,000 emails to senators urging them to block her reappointment.

Crenshaw never softened her stance. She dissented from spot Bitcoin ETF approvals in early 2024, opposed the SEC’s settlement with Ripple Labs last May, and as recently as December warned that tokenized products are “far from one-to-one replicas” of the assets they are designed to track.

“There have been very rare examples where one person goes against the grain and upends the majority,” Singer told Advisor Upside.

Help Wanted. That leaves two commissioner seats open, and an open question about who would want them. Peirce’s term ended last summer, and she’s been serving on an extension, but she’s likely to be replaced with another Republican. 

Singer said a few possible replacements for the Democratic seats include:

• Public Company Accounting Oversight Board member Kara Stein;
• Former PCAOB Chair Erica Williams; 
• and Georgetown Law professor Chris Brummer. 

Still, there is likely little room for a minority-party commissioner to exert real influence. “I just don’t know who would want to come in as a Democratic nominee knowing they’re unlikely to get anything done,” Singer said. “And not that it would be career suicide, but who wants to leave the private sector right now, when the market is soaring, to sit on the SEC?”