Former Alaska Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign is pushing back against the outlet report detailing alleged abusive behavior toward staff, including physical contact with an aide and repeated use of slurs in text messages.
Peltola, 53, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) in a race that could tip the Senate balance, is accused by nine former aides of angry outbursts during her two-and-a-half years in Congress, according to the Times report published late Wednesday. The allegations span from her 2022 special election win to replace the late Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) through her unsuccessful 2024 House re-election bid and current Senate campaign.
The most serious physical allegation centers on Feb. 7, 2024, when Peltola became agitated over a missing document and pushed a male aide in the chest, according to an eyewitness and two others later briefed on the incident. The staffer subsequently departed her team. That date marked the birthday of Peltola’s late husband, Eugene, who had died in a September 2023 plane crash.
Peltola’s spokesperson, Harry Child, contextualized the alleged incident within a period of intense personal loss. “At the time of their passing, Mary was parenting kids through their own grief, serving full-time in the US House of Representatives thousands of miles from home, and running a competitive [House] re-election campaign — all while shouldering the enormous burden of grief,” Child said in a statement.
“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,” he continued. “Exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong.”
Child maintained that Peltola acted “with respect and care” toward staff, even as the campaign acknowledged a pre-primary purge that removed her campaign manager, chief of staff, and two veteran political contractors through firing or reassignment shortly before the Aug. 18 Senate primary. The Times reviewed all-caps text messages from Peltola expressing campaign frustrations, including one warning that “OUR SIGN GAME IS F—ED.”
Four former aides told the Times that Peltola regularly used a gay slur, sometimes in reference to members of her own team — an allegation her campaign vehemently denied. The campaign did confirm, however, that she used the term “retard” in a text message earlier this year. That message came after Peltola faced backlash for taking a selfie with a commercial fisheries executive, given her opposition to massive trawling operations.
“F— that retard,” Peltola wrote in the text, though her campaign stated she regrets her choice of words.
The report also characterized Peltola as vindictive, describing her willingness to completely cut off people after perceived slights. During her failed 2024 re-election campaign, she directed fury at Planned Parenthood after the organization criticized her “yea” vote on a defense bill containing pro-life provisions.
“I hope Planned Parenthood knows that if we don’t win it’s more their loss than ours. F— THOSE B—S,” Peltola wrote in one text message.
Some former aides offered contrasting recollections of lighter duties, including feeding Peltola’s family chameleon, Meatball, with live crickets during her work travel.
Polling shows Peltola and Sullivan in a tight contest complicated by Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system and the presence of two other nominal Republican candidates on the ballot, including retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan — distinct from the incumbent senator, Dan S. Sullivan.
The Feb. 7, 2024 incident involving the male aide occurred on what would have been Eugene Peltola’s birthday, with the Times noting that Peltola’s mother had also died around the same period as her husband’s fatal plane crash.
Peltola’s campaign continues in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races.