Photo from Landfield Facebook page.
Political provocateur, entertainer, and oil services company employee Jeff Landfield is heading up a third-party, “independent expenditure” group to defeat Rep. Charisse Millett.
Landfield, who has lived in the state on and off for a few years, works by day as a business development manager for Billy Reynolds of GBR Oilfield Services, but mostly he operates as a social media provocateur.
Josh Revak is a former staff aide to Sen. Dan Sullivan and is a wounded Purple Heart veteran. His campaign for District 25 is not allowed to coordinate with Landfield’s “Let’s Back Revak” group, which is funded in part by Mel Gillis, former owner of the Sandy River Lodge. But Revak has known about the group and Landfield’s involvement.
[Read: Revak files to challenge Rep. Charisse Millett]
Landfield usually attacks women in his political work, and shies away from attacks on men. He ran for office against Sens. Lesil McGuire in 2012 and Natasha Von Imhof in 2016.
After his defeats, he left the state for a year and worked as a promoter in Australia. Now that he is back, he has publicly vowed to remove Rep. Millett from office.
His work is also highly self-promotional and often crude. Earlier this year Landfield wrote that Millett needed more “Vitamin D,” and referred his readers to the online Urban Dictionary for the definition, which is something that cannot be repeated on this website.
He brought early embarrassment to the Bill Walker Administration, when Walker had to withdraw Landfield’s appointment to the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct after pictures surfaced online of a biggie-sized Landfield wearing a speedo while partying with bikini-clad women, booze, and groping hands.
The governor’s communication director Grace Jang called his photos “disrespectful” and “misogynistic,” in Huffington Post, a characterization Landfield disputed at the time. “No specific images were cited, but Landfield’s personal Facebook page is a cornucopia of party pics, poolside Las Vegas romps, and boozy musings,” HuffPo wrote. One photo showed him with a hand on a woman’s chest, while another showed him making a crude gesture with a party favor. He and Jang have since made up and he is frequently a conduit of information from the Walker Administration.
Last week, Landfield co-hosted a fundraiser for Rep. Jason Grenn of District 22, who caucuses with House Democrats.
This is his first time chairing an independent expenditure group in Alaska.
Whether Revak can disassociate his campaign from Landfield’s public persona and misogynistic postings will be a challenge for the first-time candidate during the season leading up to the Aug. 21 primary election. It’s an association that will likely be a topic of that race, which now becomes one that bears watching.
