Barbara Boxer, "Outsourcing"
The 2010 election season may well have called into question the viability of corporate candidates. Three high-profile former execs — Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman and Linda McMahon — were handily beaten by their Democratic opponents on Nov. 2, and each struggled at times with their business backgrounds. In this brutal spot, California Senator Barbara Boxer used Fiorina's tenure at Hewlett-Packard against her, targeting her role in laying off 30,000 workers from the legendary Silicon Valley company. With the perennial specter of outsourcing at the forefront, the ad highlights damaging clips of Fiorina explaining that perhaps the work needed "to be done somewhere else." Boxer succeeded in fighting off a strong challenge from Fiorina and won re-election in a Republican year by turning her opponent's strongest asset into a liability.