95 Candidates Who Pledged Support For Net Neutrality Lost On Tuesday

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA)
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The FCC’s push for Net Neutrality legislation suffered another setback on Tuesday, after 95 of the candidates who pledged their support for it lost their elections.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee site has had a list of 95 candidates, all Democrats, listed on netneutralityprotectors.com/ as pledged supporters of Net Neutrality.

But, as CNN Money reports, all of them lost.

The FCC has been trying to expand its authority to regulate broadband internet providers, initially losing a court case in April. After that, it pushed Congress to pass legislation that would prevent the providers from blocking access to certain internet content, and force them to treat all web content providers equally.

Republicans have mostly been opposed to Net Neutrality, and the Tea Party even formed a coalition against it back in August, arguing that it hurts freedom.

Late Update: Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee told TPM in an e-mail today:

There is no sane political analyst in America who agrees with corporate shill Scott Cleland’s assertion that Tuesday’s Democratic wipeout was a ‘national referendum’ on Net Neutrality — or had anything to do with Net Neutrality. The only significant thing about Net Neutrality in 2010 is that 95 Democratic challengers felt confident enough to actively tell voters they support this pro-consumer position while zero candidates across the country felt confident enough to actively tell voters they opposed Net Neutrality — for the obvious reason that opposing the free and open Internet would be a ridiculously stupid political move.

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