"Re-elected" ad wins award

Joe Sestak didn't quite win that Senate seat, but his ad wizards at The Campaign Group won the 2010 election cycle's "Toughest Television Advertisement" award, selected by Campaigns and Elections magazine. The "re-elected" spot (see above) crystalized Sestak's argument against incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter and helped spark the underdog Democratic primary win. The Campaign Group's J.J. Balaban revealed that a junior staffer on the Sestak campaign dug up the devastating Specter clip that is the meat of the ad. From WHYY:

The great video of Specter, Balaban said, was found by a junior-level staffer in the Sestak campaign named Kipp Hebert. Balaban said the video came to him with a note saying it "might be helpful."

"Now I tell junior staffers on campaigns that I know what they do is hard," Balaban said. "They do a lot of grunt work and don't' get a lot of glory, but they have the ability to turn a United States senate campaign around."

The Campaign Group won a second Reed Award for its work on the Sestak campaign under the category "Best Bare-knuckled Street Fight Victory."