A New York Times article claimed hostility by Mary Peltola. Will it affect Alaska’s Senate race?

Alaska observers say it is too early to say how reports of bad behavior by Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola might affect the state’s closely watched election, and some supporters suggested this week that she may be subject to a double standard because of her gender.

“While it’s surprising news, I think there’s a very hefty proportion of people who go, ‘It’s a hit job. It’s typical politics,’ and kind of brush it off,” said Ivan Moore of Alaska Survey Research, a political polling firm active in the race.

“It takes a lot to swing someone over from being a Peltola voter to all of a sudden going, ‘Oh, OK, I’ll vote for Sullivan.’ So we’ll see,” Moore said.

On Wednesday, the New York Times published an anonymously sourced article documenting abusive behavior by the former Alaska congresswoman, now a leading candidate for Senate. The article said she was hostile to her staff and used slurs and profanity to privately criticize others.

The article detailed accounts from former staff members who said she required aides to feed her family’s pet chameleon and said that in 2024, she wrote that she hoped a local Planned Parenthood board member would “die of a botched abortion.”

That comment came after the group was slow to endorse Peltola in that year’s election. This year, she does not appear on the group’s endorsement list.

“Planned Parenthood has been called worse and withstood more in its 100+ years; we’ll talk with her about what was reported when she’s Senator-elect,” said Morgan Lim, Alaska state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. “Nothing has changed in the stakes of this race and we remain laser-focused on ousting Sullivan from the Senate — making sure Alaska voters know that Dan Sullivan is an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ fanatic who will continue to rubber stamp Trump’s judicial nominees.”

Peltola declined to talk to Alaska reporters on Wednesday evening after a meet-and-greet with union members in Anchorage.

Peltola was elected in 2022 to fill the remainder of Congressman Don Young’s term after his death that spring. She subsequently won the general election in November and served a two-year term of her own.

Her time in office coincided with a period of personal loss. Five months after she began her full term, her mother died. Three months after that, her husband died in a plane crash. She sued his employer a year and a half later, and a trial is set to begin in March.

Harry Child, a spokesman for Peltola’s campaign, said by text that the Times article is exaggerated.

“Like any person who has gone through multiple personal tragedies in the span of a few months, Mary sometimes struggled to deal with her grief. But she treats her staff with respect and care, and she maintains close positive relationships with her staff spanning her nearly 30 years in public service,” he said. “Exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong.”

A double standard for judging Peltola?

Polling indicates Peltola, a Democrat, is in a close race against Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan for one of Alaska’s two U.S. Senate seats. The winner of that election may decide whether Democrats or Republicans hold a majority of the Senate.

Moore said he doesn’t know whether the Times article will affect the eventual result. 

Readers of the Anchorage Press said they don’t think it will, with some labeling the Times article a “nothingburger.”

The Times found something similar in a followup article of its own. A spokesperson for the Alaska Democratic Party called the initial article “a hit piece.”

“Mary grew up working on a fishing boat and was made in the mold of great Alaskan leaders that came before her. She’s the only candidate in this race who will actually fight to lower costs and put Alaska first, and Alaskans will send her to the Senate this fall because she will deliver,” the spokesperson said.

Nate Adams, a spokesperson for the Sullivan campaign, said by email, “Nearly 30 people close to Mary Peltola were interviewed and more than 100 screenshots informed this reporting. What the Times printed is only a fraction of it, so imagine what was left out, and what else Mary Peltola is hiding from Alaskans.”

Jim Lottsfeldt, a veteran political campaigner who is working on pro-Peltola efforts this year, said he sees somewhat of a double standard in the way she’s being treated.

Her predecessor, Young, was notorious for profane, scurrilous and even violent behavior while in office, and former Sens. Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski were known for their hot tempers.

“Stevens blew his stack, and we were all like, ‘That’s great, because he blew his stack for our benefit.’ And then you had Don Young saying the most outrageous things occasionally, but got like tons of things passed,” Lottsfeldt said. “So when all this stuff happens with the guys, nobody really clutches their pearls, and now we have little Mary Sunshine, Mary Peltola, who may have said the word f**k when she was mad, and now we’re acting like it’s a major political story, and I don’t think it is.”

Some former staffers back Times reporting, others dispute it

After the Times published its initial article, the Beacon contacted more than a dozen former Peltola aides in an attempt to verify its contents. Some, speaking anonymously, said they could not confirm all the incidents described by the Times but said the article matched the tone and mood of their time in her Congressional office or with her campaign.

They asked to not be named in order to offer frank opinions and because their current jobs may require them to work with Peltola in the future.

But at least some defended their former boss.

Kate Consenstein worked for Peltola in the Alaska Legislature and now runs a communications firm in Anchorage. The Peltola campaign suggested her as someone whose experience doesn’t match the Times article. 

“I wouldn’t want to engage in denying the veracity or the accuracy of those people’s accounts, especially because I don’t know who they are,” she said, “but I would just say the person that I worked for, and the person that I still know, is kind, generous, and not an abusive boss.”

Current U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is a Republican who endorsed Peltola’s 2024 U.S. House run but is backing Sullivan this year. She told reporters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, “I do acknowledge that while she was here in her first term, she was not only thrown into a very challenging situation immediately running for campaign, but then to lose her husband in that airplane crash and to deal with all of that. That’s pressure that is hard for anybody to bear.”

Sullivan, also interviewed by D.C. reporters on Thursday, said, “I think it’s very sad, very disturbing that so many Alaskans had to get put through that kind of severe abuse, which is very disturbing, but not surprising.”

Tyson Fick, a fisherman from Juneau who worked as a special assistant in Peltola’s congressional office, said there’s no doubt that Peltola would want a “mulligan” for some of the things she said, and he feels she was frequently second-guessed by East Coast staff.

“She never, I thought, was abusive, but also she often got some inadequate staff work,” he said.

“Having been around some operations where they were a little more, you know, systematic and organized, it was hard for me. I had to get out of there. I love Mary. I’ll be with Mary till I die, but I knew I couldn’t sign up for them again,” he said.

Fick and other Alaskans interviewed for this article were particularly critical of Anton McParland, a non-Alaskan who replaced Alex Ortiz as Peltola’s chief of staff. Ortiz, who declined to comment for this article, had previously worked for Young.

In addition to the personal losses that Peltola suffered, there was also a conflict between the people Peltola brought from Alaska and the people she hired from the East Coast.

Peltola and Fick are fishermen and accustomed to salty language, he said. Someone with a trust fund may not understand it, he said.

“Sometimes you say some salty stuff just for effect, and it doesn’t reflect a cultural bias … I get that words mean things, and words hurt, and people get their feelings hurt, and maybe it’s not right, but there’s also times when you’re under super stress, and you’re grieving, that stuff comes out like in inopportune moments, and it’s like, yeah, we could communicate better, we could do better, but also we could have — I could have done better for her,” Fick said.