Monday, September 10, 2012

GoDaddy Outage Brings Down Campaign Websites For 5 of 7 Arizona Congressional Incumbents

(UPDATE (2:51p.m.): Added information about SOPA and incumbents' positions on it.)

Phoenix-based website giant GoDaddy has been out for most of the day*, and with it have gone the websites of five of Arizona's seven Congressional incumbents seeking re-election in November**.  In fact, ALL of the Congressmen north of Tucson appear to be GoDaddy customers.

Southern Arizona's two Representatives - Raul Grijalva and Ron Barber - have no issues this afternoon with their websites.  Trent Franks was down for several hours, but is up now as GoDaddy reports success in restoring some service.  (The group known as "Anonymous" is claiming responsibility.)

However, as of 2:30p.m. (Arizona time), Reps. Ed Pastor, David Schweikert, Paul Gosar and Jeff Flake all have inaccessible campaign websites.

Perhaps Arizona candidates are more likely than those elsewhere in the country to use GoDaddy because of its strong hometown presence.  But, as Anonymous proclaims that it attacked GoDaddy because of its support for the SOPA law that failed in Congress, some of them might have some questions about using the registrar/host; none of the incumbents whose websites are effected were known to support SOPA.  The controversial internet piracy-related law was not voted upon after public opposition was whipped up by the one-day blackout protest by major (and, minor) websites.

* Arizona's Politics also has its domain name registered with GoDaddy and points it to its blog address.  So, if you type in "ArizonasPolitics.com" you will be stymied, but will succeed if you type in "ArizonasPolitics.blogspot.com".

** Arizona's eighth Congressman, Ben Quayle, lost in the primary to Schweikert.  There are no incumbents running in two of the nine districts - Arizona having gained one in reapportionment and the Quayle/Schweikert battle.




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