Who Will Be The First Politician To Be GoDaddy'd?

from the turning-into-an-election-issue dept

Mark Amodei [NV2]

Joe Baca [CA43]

John Barrow [GA12]

Karen Bass [CA33]

Howard Berman [CA28]

Marsha Blackburn [TN7]

Mary Bono Mack [CA45]

John Carter [TX31]

Steven Chabot [OH1]

Judy Chu [CA32]

John Conyers [MI14]

Jim Cooper [TN5]

Ted Deutch [FL19]

Elton Gallegly [CA24]

Robert Goodlatte [VA6]

Tim Griffin [AR2]

Tim Holden [PA17]

Peter King [NY3]

John Larson [CT1]

Ben Lujan [NM3]

Thomas Marino [PA10]

Alan Nunnelee [MS1]

William Owens [NY23]

Ben Quayle [AZ3]

Dennis Ross [FL12]

Steve Scalise [LA1]

Adam Schiff [CA29]

Brad Sherman [CA27]

Lee Terry [NE2]

Debbie Wasserman Schultz [FL20]

Melvin Watt [NC12]

Ben Cardin [Maryland]

Bob Casey [Pennsylvania]

Bob Corker [Tennessee]

Dianne Feinstein [California]

Kristen Gillibrand [New York]

Orrin Hatch [Utah]

Amy Klobuchar [Minnesota]

Bob Menendez [New Jersey]

Bill Nelson [Florida]

Sheldon Whitehouse [Rhode Island]

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Having GoDaddy back off its support for SOPA/PIPA is one thing, but it hardly kills off these bills. Politicians are still very much in support of the bills, and both bills are poised to move forward in Congress when it comes back into session in late January. Of course, 2012 is an election year, which means that all of the members of the House who are supporting SOPA are up for re-election, and 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election. If I were a candidate looking to challenge the incumbents, I'd be paying close, close attention to what happened to GoDaddy, and seeing how the "netroots" community was willing to band together quickly to make things happen. I'd be especially focused on this if I were running against one of the key supporters of SOPA, like Lamar Smith, John Conyers, Bob Goodlatte or Mel Watt (whose opponent should just play that video of him saying he doesn't understand technology, but believes the experts are wrong anyway, over and over and over again).Perhaps a little crowdsourcing is in order. Can we figure out who's already registered to run against the incumbent supporters of SOPA and PIPA, and reach out to get their opinions on the bills and of censorship of the internet?Here's the full list of the current co-sponsors for SOPA. If any of their opponents in next year's election are paying attention, they should be using this as a key issue and reaching out to the internet community, ASAP. What happened to GoDaddy can happen to a politician in an instant:And here's the list of Senators who are both supporters of PIPAare up for re-election in 2012. Wikipedia lists who's already registered to challenge them Jeff Bingaman in New Mexico, Joe Lieberman in Connecticut and Herb Kohl in Wisconsin are all up for re-election in 2012... but all have announced that they're retiring. It may still be worthwhile to reach out to those running for their seats, but it becomes less of an election issue in those states. Dianne Feinstein still hasn't technically announced that she's running for re-election, but most people expect her to do so. She's also an interesting one. Despite being from Northern California, she has done almost nothing to cultivate support of the tech community, and is so out of touch that she thinks they're okay with PIPA It seems that anyone running against these folks would be missing out on a huge opportunity not to make the incumbent's support of censoring the internet into a campaign issue.

Filed Under: campaigns, censorship, elections, free speech, internet, pipa, protect ip, sopa

Companies: godaddy