Two Democratic gubernatorial candidates — Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Paul Davis of Kansas — have pulled campaign ads within the past week after actors used in the TV spots were found to have sketchy pasts.
In an ad titled “Jeeps,” an actor named Alan Benyak touts Wolf’s time in the Peace Corps. But Benyak has had other gigs far more interesting that a dull political commercial. As Buzzfeed reports, he played “Mr. Cannibal” in a 2013 torture film called “Breeding Farm.”
According to a film’s description, “Breeding Farm” is about “four friends are kidnapped by a mysterious man. The friends wake up in a basement, and realize they are part of something horrifying. A human breeding farm. They are to be milked, bred, and much, much worse!”
“The film features Benyak torturing a half-naked woman, selling a woman, force-feeding a woman, engaging in cannibalism, and inspecting a woman as if she is livestock,” Buzzfeed reports. “Other parts of the film include rape, miking a woman and making them act like farm animals, kidnapping, treating women as livestock, riding a woman, physical abuse, and torture.”
Wolf is opposing Republican incumbent Tom Corbett.
Paul Davis, a Kansas state senator running against incumbent Republican Sam Brownback, also hired an actor with a sordid history named Jeff Montague.
In 1989, Montague was suspended after allegedly making advances on a male student at Seaman High School, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported last week. Citing that incident, the Boy Scouts of America suspended Montague that same year.
In 2007 he was arrested in a Topeka park for soliciting sodomy from an undercover officer.
Both campaigns have pulled their respective ads and issued statements.
“We were unaware of Mr. Benyak’s involvement in the film, and we are making changes to the ad now,” the Wolf campaign told Buzzfeed.
“Today, it was brought to our attention that a participant in one of those ads has serious issues in his background. Upon hearing of these issues, the ad, which ran for a few hours, was pulled down immediately. I want to apologize to Kansans for this mistake,” Davis said in a statement last week.