Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel hasn't been to Iowa yet — but his introduction to the first-in-the-nation state is coming through television ads against former Vice President Joe Biden.

The ad ran on five TV stations in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids Thursday night. The Committee for Peace, Justice and Mike Gravel paid a net total of $7,085 for the ads to air, according to publicly available Federal Communications Commission records. The total buy was about $10,000, according to Gravel's campaign manager David Oks.

The 60-second ad targeting the former vice president highlights Biden's support of the Iraq war, his support of "tough on crime" law he passed in 1994 which some attribute to increased mass incarceration.

The ad asks "Is this the best our party has to offer?"

"I served with Biden in the Senate — he's dead wrong on many issues that have serious human consequences," Gravel said in a news release. "His ideology is just off the rail."

The ad campaign is not just to criticize Biden's track record: It's also an attempt to get Gravel, a former U.S. Senator representing Alaska, into the July debates. Gravel has netted over 60,000 donors, and is attempting to hit the 65,000 donor threshold before the July 17 deadline, his campaign has said.

The debates will be hosted by CNN in Detroit on July 30 and 31.

Oks said the goal of getting into the debates is to offer a further-left perspective to American voters as they watch the Democratic debates.

"Our goal has always been to draw attention to the flaws of centrists like Biden who masquerade as 'progressives' and peddle a made-up argument of 'electability,'" Oks said in a news release. "Senator Gravel called out Biden for his rightwing policies in the 2008 debates and is prepared to do so again in the July debate."