The most memorable ads of 2016

by Lisa Hagen - 11/05/16 9:36 AM ET

Two years of political bombardment over the airwaves will come to an end Tuesday.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been pumped into ads by campaigns and outside groups during the White House and congressional races, with a number of the television spots almost as unforgettable as the wild campaign itself.

Whether funny, inspirational or downright jaw-dropping, here are some of the most memorable ads of the 2016 cycle:

1. ‘Capt. Khan’

Khizr Khan became a household name during the presidential race after delivering a fiery rebuke of Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention in July.

In recent weeks, he’s become active in Hillary Clinton’s campaign and was featured in an ad detailing the story of his son, Capt. Humayun Khan, who rushed a suicide bomber and died while saving his unit in Iraq in 2004.

Khizr Khan has hammered the GOP presidential nominee for proposing a ban on Muslims from entering the country.

“He was 27 years old and he was a Muslim American,” Khan said in the ad. “I want to ask Mr. Trump — would my son have a place in your America?”

2. Missouri Dem assembles an AR-15 blindfolded

Democratic Senate candidate Jason Kander had one of the most talked about ads this cycle.

The Missouri secretary of State’s ad featured the Army veteran assembling a rifle blindfolded. As a Democrat running in a red state, Kander aimed to demonstrate his support for both Second Amendment rights and background checks.

Kander has given Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.) the toughest reelection race of his career, with polls indicating a tight race.

3. Rubio’s boots

In the GOP presidential primary, the main super-PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush needled Marco Rubio over the infamous heeled boots the Florida senator wore on the campaign trail.

Right to Rise USA launched an ad in January with a figure in a suit and boots dancing to “These Boost are Made for Walking,” knocking Rubio for reversing his position on a host of issues including immigration and Syrian policy.

The spot also criticized Rubio for missing votes in the upper chamber while campaigning for president, one of the main lines of attack against the Florida senator.

4. Women mouth Trump comments

Hillary Clinton’s super-PAC launched numerous ads splicing together controversial comments by Trump, but this particular spot from May stood out.

The Priorities USA Action ad featured women of various ages wearing T-shirts with the Republican nominee’s face emblazoned on them as they mouthed the real estate mogul’s inflammatory comments about women.

The ad also featured a man standing next to his daughter as he mouthed Trump saying he would likely date his eldest daughter, Ivanka, if they weren’t related.

5. Cruz spoofs ‘Office Space’

Ted Cruz gave a nod to the movie “Office Space” during the GOP primary, with the Texas senator’s campaign releasing an ad going after Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

In the ad, two men dressed in business attire and a woman wearing a pantsuit destroy a computer by kicking and smashing it with a bat. “A real Clinton knows that they’re entitled and you don’t get to know what they do,” the ad states.

Cruz’s campaign had another memorable ad, titled “Invasion,” that had men and women dressed in suits running across the southwestern border, arguing that business and media elites would oppose immigration reform if their jobs were at stake.

6. Fiorina: ‘Look at this face’

Trump took heat for mocking GOP presidential rival Carly Fiorina’s appearance in a September 2015 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” Trump was quoted as saying about the former Hewlett-Packard CEO.

Fiorina hit back, saying that Trump was growing worried because she was “climbing in the polls.”

The super-PAC supporting Fiorina’s campaign used Trump’s criticism in an ad showing a montage of women’s faces as Fiorina describes them as the “face of leadership in your communities, in your business, in your places of work and worship.”

7. Ferris Bueller cameo

Actor Ben Stein reprised his famed role in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” in an ad ripping Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (Iowa) opponent.

During the ad, Stein reenacts a scene from the movie where he’s taking attendance in a classroom, but this time he’s looking for Grassley’s Democratic opponent, Patty Judge.

The ad slammed the former Iowa lieutenant governor for missing a majority of various state meetings and for not attending a handful of primary debates. After not answering, Stein moves on to call Grassley’s name, saying that “he’s always here.”

Grassley has said this year’s reelection race is the toughest of his career, but the longtime GOP senator has maintained a formidable 20-point lead in polling.

8. Foul-mouthed grandmother

New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer’s campaign drew headlines this fall for an ad featuring a foul-mouthed grandmother.

The House candidate’s ad starts with a grandmother sitting on a park bench with a newspaper, telling the audience that she recently discovered that Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), a member of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, is a “tea party radical.”

The seemingly innocent ad quickly turns to a frustrated grandmother letting expletives fly when she says Garrett voted against pay equity and privately said he won’t pay dues to the House Republicans’ campaign arm since they support gay candidates.

“Scott Garrett pulled the wool over our eyes. And I’m f—ing mad about it,” the woman says.

Gottheimer, a former Bill Clinton speechwriter, is running in a district in the New York City suburbs that has become a top Democratic target.

9. ‘Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?’

In late September, Trump’s campaign seized on footage of Clinton addressing a union conference via satellite video when she asked why she wasn’t 50 points ahead in the polls.

The ad answered that question by arguing that Clinton lied about her handling of classified information on her private email server and harped on Clinton’s gaffe calling “half” of Trump’s supporters “a basket of deplorables.”

The ad ends with the question about Clinton’s standing in the polls, followed by the narrator saying, “Do you even need to ask?”

10. Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘America’

Bernie Sanders’s campaign channeled Simon and Garfunkel during the Democratic presidential primary with a minute-long spot documenting the Vermont Senator’s “political revolution” set to the tune of “America.”

It cut together a montage of different places across the country, including snapshots from Sanders’s campaign travels, offering a positive message in the weeks before the contentious Democratic primary season kicked off.