Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
As Joe Biden took it on the chin at Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate over his past opposition to school busing, the conservatives at the Club for Growth were taking a victory lap.
The Club’s political arm had dropped $7,000 on a one-minute television ad that aired in the Des Moines, Iowa, media market during the debate, hitting Biden on the precise issue for which he was being taken to task on-air by California Sen. Kamala Harris. “Joe Biden’s done some dumb things over the years,” the ad says, citing the time he “sided with racist Dixiecrats against measures to desegregate schools.”