FCC maverick gets with the program.

• Position: People

With a mop of blond hair and an impish smile, Kevin Martin looks like Dennis the Menace grown up. The Weddington native even seems a bit mischievous to fellow Republicans on the Federal Communications Commission. At 36, he is the youngest member. He also spars with its Republican chairman and sometimes votes with the Democrats.

In February, he bucked Chairman Michael Powell, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who wanted a wide-ranging rollback of restrictions on telephone companies. Martin abandoned his two fellow Republicans to vote with the two Democrats. BellSouth and Verizon stock fell 7% and 5%, respectively, that day. "It was," he says, "what I thought was the right thing to do for consumers and businesses."

In June, however, he voted with the Republicans to relax rules on owning newspapers and television and radio stations. The new regulations allow companies to own chains of TV stations that reach nearly half the nation's viewers and to own newpapers and broadcast stations in the same city. With the Internet and cable and satellite channels, Americans have more sources of information than when he was growing up. His parents' TV set got just five stations.

His dad owned an insurance brokerage in nearby Charlotte, where Martin attended Catholic schools. After...