DES MOINES — The Des Moines Social Club’s location was the Iowa headquarters for the Howard Dean 2004 presidential run and Barack Obama’s run in 2008. Out of Dean’s 2004 campaign sprang Democracy For America, a pro-liberal group that has been active in campaigning for Democratic candidates in the years following, and now the co-sponsors of a new attack ad targeting Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Dean’s brother, Jim, the head of DFA, addressed a crowd of supporters at Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roxanne Conlin’s fundraiser in the Des Moines Social Club on Sunday evening, and said he didn’t even know about the ad before it launched.

The ad was co-sponsored with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The commercial starts with a man, Kevin Shilling, listing off Republicans he voted for in the past including Richard Nixon, George W. Bush and Charles Grassley. Then goes into several clips of Grassley talking about “living off the public tit” in regards to working for the federal government and “pulling the plug on grandma” during a speech on health care reform in summer 2009, among other seemingly inappropriate quotes.

Grassley’s campaign told the Iowa State Daily the ad is little more than a fundraising tactic and not to expect to see it air much. When it was launched, it had only been aired on KCCI in the morning and Grassley’s campaign noted WHO-TV already declined to air it as-is.

On Sunday, Conlin told a crowd she was one of nine Senate candidates who earned DFA’s endorsement. She said it was hard to believe WHO saw the quotes in the ad as being out of context considering they were clips of Grassley himself speaking.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee alleged WHO was “in bed” with the Republican senator’s campaign because they would not air the ad and then said the quote “they’re going to pull the plug on grandma” was taken out of context as their reason for denying the ad. The PCCC and DFA posted citations for all of the quotes online.

“We heard from local folks that the Grassley campaign was boasting about WHO-TV not running our ad before we even knew about it, indicating to us that the Grassley campaign knows how devastasting the ad is and is having conversations with stations urging them to keep from public view this truthful ad showing what an embarrassment Chuck Grassley is to Iowa,” the PCCC stated in an e-mail.

WHO also has a partnership with the Des Moines Register, which endorsed Grassley over Conlin in a Sunday editorial.

Nevertheless, more than 1,100 people donated more than $25,000 online in six hours toward the ad attacking Grassley.

The Grassley campaign further alleged Shilling, who is portrayed as an independent, is someone who has voted largely for Democrats in recent years and has even been involved in the Iowa Democratic Party.

Dean told the crowd Sunday no matter how good an ad might be, radio and television advertising is typically the least effective way to engage voters. Instead, he encouraged people to use social media, make personal phone calls rather than robocalls and do face-to-face canvassing in the final 10 days leading up to the election.