By retaining their Senate majority, Democrats no longer feel the urgency to use the lame-duck session to confirm executive branch appointments, pushing off decisions on who will fill key positions until at least next year. That means that the Biden administration will likely go through 2023—as they have through 2021 and 2022—with Louis DeJoy as postmaster general, given the current makeup of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors, the body that decides whether to fire the PMG and choose a successor. Currently, the board supports DeJoy, and if the members whose terms expire in December are allowed to stay on the board an extra year, that support will continue.
The terms of Democrat Lee Moak and Republican William Zollars both expire on December 8th of this year. But both can receive a “holdover year,” where they can fulfill the duties of a postal governor before leaving the board. With no nominees currently in place to replace Moak and Zollars, that scenario is likely, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. In fact, on the USPS website, Moak and Zollars are listed as currently in their holdover years, even though that technically isn’t true until December 8th.