Top 8 new political stars of 2010

It was a banner year for the creation of political heroes and villains. Here are eight who rose from obscurity to stardom 

Page 2 of 2

5. Marco Rubio
The young, telegenic, "Reaganesque," Cuban-American Senator-elect from Florida took a big gamble by challenging popular, moderate Gov. Charlie Crist for the Republican nomination. And his first big win came in April, when his juggernaut campaign forced Crist to leave the Republican Party to run as an independent. Rubio easily won the resulting three-way general election, and conservatives immediately started throwing around the word "presidential." "This guy has serious momentum," said Will Heaven in The Telegraph, "comparable even to Barack Obama's leading up to the 2008 presidential election."

6. Heath Shuler
The former NFL quarterback and North Carolina Democrat was one of the few conservative Blue Dogs to keep his seat, but he went from backbencher to boldface name when he mounted a "quixotic bid" to unseat Nancy Pelosi as the top House Democrat. The effort didn't succeed, but it wasn't an "empty challenge," says Armstrong Williams in The Hill. Democrats will remember him as one of the few to see the "political reality" that Pelosi is leading the party "over a cliff.... Say what you will about the fella, but Shuler is no dummy."

7. Krystal Ball
Ball, a 28-year-old Virginia Democrat, didn't win her uphill House bid to unseat the Republican incumbent, but she won respect for her handling of leaked six-year-old Christmas party photos in which she's seen simulating oral sex on a phallic nose worn by her now-ex-husband. Feminists were "enthused," and a star was born, says Noreen Malone in Slate. "In her wholehearted embrace of femininity, her sense of entitlement, her bold jump to the front of the line, Ball may be the left's answer to Sarah Palin."

8. Chris Christie
The tough-talking Republican made waves in New Jersey right after being sworn in last January, when he declared war on public-teachers' unions. But he became a nationwide sensation and object of "serious — and sudden — infatuation" among Republicans and Tea Party activists thanks to YouTube. Christie's videos, consisting largely of him yelling at somebody in some public forum, have gone viral, to the point that he has become "the Justin Bieber of political media," says Slate's David Weigel. It's amazing that among politicians of both parties, only "Christie's team realize that winning fame as a national politician is not altogether different than winning fame as a budding Canadian pop star."