Mary Peltola

Introduction

Mary Peltola is a Democratic politician from Alaska who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2022 to 2025, winning a special election to fill the seat held for 49 years by the late Rep. Don Young and defeating Republican Sarah Palin in the state’s first ranked-choice general election. In 2026 she became the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in a race that could help decide control of the chamber.

Her Senate campaign is now caught in two scandals at once. In September 2026, a New York Times report built on interviews with nine unnamed former staffers accused Peltola of presiding over a workplace marked by angry, profane outbursts, use of offensive slurs, and the physical shoving of a male aide — allegations her campaign vehemently denies. In early October, two more former staffers told the Alaska Landmine that Peltola had repeatedly used the n-word in 2024 — an allegation her campaign flatly denies, and which the New York Post amplified days before the election. And in late October 2026, a second Times report revealed that operatives for her campaign and the national Democrats’ Senate committee had recruited a retiree named Dan J. Sullivan to run as a same-name spoiler against Sen. Dan S. Sullivan — a scheme Alaska’s Republican governor answered by ordering a criminal investigation of her campaign.

Background Information

Peltola, 53, is Yup’ik Alaska Native and a former Alaska state legislator who represented the Bethel area in the state House for a decade before leaving elective office for roughly a decade, working as a fisheries consultant and executive. She returned to politics in 2022, winning the special election for Alaska’s at-large House seat in a stunning upset over Palin, and held the seat through the 2024 election, which she lost to Republican Nick Begich. The race has drawn national Democratic star power: in January, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez urged her supporters to donate to Peltola’s campaign; asked by the Post about the slur allegation, Ocasio-Cortez did not respond.

Her personal life has been marked by tragedy now directly entangled with the staff-treatment allegations: her husband, Eugene Peltola, died in a September 2023 plane crash, and her mother also died around the same period. The shoving incident described by the Times reportedly occurred on February 7, 2024 — the birthday of her late husband.

The race she now runs is one of a handful expected to decide Senate control, against an incumbent whose name is at the center of the second scandal: Republicans have repeatedly objected that “Dan J. Sullivan” — a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, actually Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. — appears on the November 3 ballot alongside Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, who is listed as a “registered Republican” and “incumbent” while the other Sullivan carries no party affiliation.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations. The staff-treatment claims in this section are allegations from a New York Times report published September 23, 2026, citing nine unnamed former staffers, including an eyewitness account of the shoving incident. They were never admitted by Mary Peltola, never criminally charged, and never adjudicated in court. Peltola denies the pattern of behavior described, her campaign denies the slur allegations outright, and it says the physical contact was a bump, not a push. The racial-slur allegation added below — that Peltola used the n-word after a poorly attended October 2024 dinner and again during a spring 2024 staff meeting — comes from two unnamed former staffers speaking to the Alaska Landmine: it has never been admitted by Peltola, never charged, and never adjudicated; her campaign calls it an outright lie, and the dinner’s organizer disputes it.

According to the Times, cited by the New York Post, Peltola became agitated on February 7, 2024, when she could not find a document and pushed a male aide on the chest — per an eyewitness and two others who were later told about the incident. The staffer later left her team. Her campaign says the staffer was “bumped, not pushed.”

Four ex-aides told the Times that Peltola regularly used a homophobic slur, including in reference to members of her own team — an allegation her campaign has vehemently denied. The campaign did acknowledge that Peltola used the word “retard” in a text message earlier in 2026, venting about backlash she received over a selfie with a commercial fisheries executive; the campaign says she regrets the choice of words. Alaska’s News Source summarized the report as alleging Peltola “used a homophobic slur, sometimes about her own staff, pushed a staffer and shoved a water bottle in a staff member’s face,” with her team calling the water-bottle moment lighthearted.

The Times also reviewed profane all-caps text messages from Peltola’s Senate campaign, including one warning “OUR SIGN GAME IS F–KED,” and reported that she raged at Planned Parenthood in a text after the group attacked her for voting for a defense bill containing pro-life provisions. Former aides also described her as vindictive and willing to cut people off after perceived slights.

The turmoil reportedly reached the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: Peltola became so frustrated with her staff that she called a senior DSCC leader, who arranged for consultant Brad Elkins to fly to Anchorage. Staff met with Elkins, some said they intended to quit, and soon afterward the campaign’s law firm, the Elias Law Group, relayed to several longtime aides that they were being terminated or reassigned, according to correspondence viewed by the Times.

The slur allegations took a heavier turn in early October 2026, when two more former staffers told the Alaska Landmine — speaking anonymously, citing fear of retaliation — that Peltola had repeatedly used the n-word in 2024. One said the outburst followed an October 25, 2024 dinner honoring the nearly 4,000 African American Army soldiers who helped build the Alaska-Canada Highway during World War II, an event promoted by Ed Wesley, an Army veteran and former president of the Anchorage NAACP: Wesley had pressed the campaign to buy tables and promised they would be filled, a Federal Election Commission filing shows the campaign spent $8,000 on tickets weeks beforehand, and when staff reported afterward that the tables had sat mostly empty — Wesley put them at roughly 30 percent full — Peltola, who did not attend, allegedly became enraged, repeatedly called Wesley a “scammer,” and said, “I can’t believe that n—-r,” according to the staffer. The New York Post amplified the account on November 1, two days before the Senate vote.

A second staffer told the Landmine that Peltola used the word repeatedly during a spring 2024 campaign staff meeting, convened while the campaign ran opposition research that surfaced her son’s self-produced rap channel — its lyrics carried the slur, and the videos were later deleted, according to former staffers. The Peltola campaign did not respond to the Landmine before publication, then sent a statement calling the story “an outright lie published by a right-wing gossip blogger – who is currently being sued for defamation – as part of a smear campaign driven by an unstable, disgruntled former staffer who was fired,” and saying “Mary would never use this word, which is a vile slur with a painful, hateful history.” Wesley, who discloses that he supports Peltola and has volunteered as an advisor to her campaign, disputed the account in his own statement: he was not in the room, “an anonymous, secondhand account of a closed-door conversation cannot be tested,” the claims surfaced only weeks before the election, and in five years of knowing Peltola he has “never heard her use that word” nor heard anyone accuse her of it.

Alleged “decoy candidate” scheme, under criminal investigation. The account below comes from New York Times reporting citing interviews, text messages and documents; it involves alleged conduct by campaign operatives, not any finding against Peltola herself. No one has been charged, ballot-stacking is not itself illegal in Alaska, and Peltola denies her campaign’s involvement. Everything here is unadjudicated.

The second scandal broke on October 28, 2026, when the Times reported — and the New York Post relayed — that veteran Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz, working with staffers of both Peltola’s Senate campaign and the DSCC, recruited Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher and former U.S. Forest Service employee, to enter the Senate race under the same name as the Republican incumbent in order to siphon votes from Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. The report cited text messages in which Peltola’s then-chief of staff, Anton McParland, said he feared Kurtz was being too conspicuous, prompting DSCC director of campaigns Andrew Piatt to reply “We will check in”; former campaign manager Elisa Rios recalled Kurtz describing pseudonyms and cover stories to throw off Republican monitors. Rios told the Times Peltola was “definitely aware” of the effort but not actively involved.

The scheme’s paper trail predates the report: in June, Alaska’s Division of Elections removed Dan J. Sullivan from the primary ballot after finding his declaration was filed “with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality,” but the Alaska Supreme Court put him back on, finding state law did not require candidates to run in good faith and that courts could not rule on a candidate’s motives. Dan J. Sullivan has insisted he entered the race of his own volition and had no contact with Peltola’s campaign — “Zero, none, zilch,” he said in June — though the Times reported he attended anti-Trump “No Kings” protests and supported Peltola’s House bids.

The day the report published, President Trump demanded on Truth Social that Peltola be barred from running, calling the scheme “ELECTION FRAUD” and telling reporters “I think they should be prosecuted” and that it was “voter fraud at the highest level” — without explaining what crime, if any, had been committed. Overnight, Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered the state Department of Public Safety to investigate “whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted,” writing that the reporting “reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates — including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator — to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes.” The order came a week after the Justice Department, at Trump’s direction, sued to block certification of a potential Peltola win while Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. remains on the ballot — a suit that alleged no specific illegal activity, and which Chief Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed on Sunday, November 1, two days before the election. Gleason wrote that the relief the government sought was “infeasible” because so many voters had already cast ballots, that it offered “no workable plan” to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan and investigate them while preserving voter secrecy, and that the attempt ran counter to the Constitution’s assignment of election administration to the states and to the Supreme Court’s Purcell principle against changing election rules close to a vote. The Justice Department had also escalated its criminal investigation in the race’s final week, issuing a raft of new grand jury subpoenas over Dan J. Sullivan’s presence on the ballot, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press, while the FBI contacted people who donated to him asking whether they had been misled about which candidate they were supporting.

The probe visibly escalated in the race’s final days: with federal officials having confirmed the existence of a criminal investigation, FBI agents began canvassing Dan J. Sullivan’s donors — an Anchorage-based agent visited a boat dealership in Petersburg, where the candidate lives, and left a business card for donor Charles Flint; two agents conducted a brief doorstep interview with another donor in Sitka; and donors in Massachusetts were contacted as well. Agents asked donors whether they had been misled about which candidate they were supporting; Flint, who contributed $500 over the summer and said he had known Sullivan for years as a respected teacher and musician, told the Associated Press he did not feel misled and would “let him waste his time trying to track me down.” Alaska U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman said the federal investigation has been underway for several months and that the Times’ reporting has produced a “significant surge of law enforcement assets to Alaska.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

The September staff-treatment report immediately roiled the race. At a town hall the evening it was published, Peltola declined a pre-event interview request and, surrounded by staff, avoided reporters’ questions about the allegations. Her spokesperson, Harry Child, defended her: “exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong.” The campaign says Peltola acted “with respect and care” toward staff. Liberals and prominent Democrats publicly questioned the credibility of that article, while The Alaska Story wrote that “her judgment, temperament and treatment of staff are now under scrutiny by a press that would normally be highly sympathetic.”

The ballot-scheme report drew a harsher reaction from Republicans. Sen. Dan Sullivan said his rival should “come clean” and that Alaskans should “look Mary Peltola in the eye and ask her, ‘Did you cheat?’ She won’t even answer that question”; his spokesman accused Peltola and her campaign of “gaslighting Alaskans, denying a scheme they were running all along.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Alaskans “deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign — what has been revealed is a pattern of lies and coverups and a culture of deception that belongs nowhere in our elections or among our elected officials.” Peltola, campaigning in Soldotna, called the report “just another distraction… This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions”; her campaign said it “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign,” and the DSCC likewise said it “is not involved with Dan J. Sullivan.” Some Democrats defended the practice instead, noting ballot-stacking is legal and commonplace on both sides — the Alaska Republican Party argued in 2024 for keeping a Democratic House candidate who campaigned from a federal prison on the ballot — and Attorney General Todd Blanche, pressed on Fox News, seemed to concede the laws may not have been broken.

President Trump returned to the story Saturday night at a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate, again calling the case “voter fraud at the highest level,” asserting of Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. that “Nobody can find him now, so he knows he’s guilty,” and suggesting, without providing details, that top Democratic leaders outside the state could have been involved and should be prosecuted. At a campaign rally in Anchorage on Friday, Peltola again denied involvement in any plan to place candidates on the ballot, saying she was “deeply offended” by allegations she called “garbage” and part of a “smear campaign” to suppress turnout on the eve of the election — “I know I can beat Dan Sullivan. I do not need any help winning this race.”

On Sunday, two days out, Sen. Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the alleged scheme “is working”: “They got the decoy guy on the ballot. I’m sure I’m going to lose a lot of votes to that trickery.” He doubted Peltola’s denials — “There is no way this went on for a year that they weren’t informing her,” he said. “She got caught lying, and she’s still lying to the Alaskan people, the media, to all of us” — while committing to accept Tuesday’s result either way. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said it’s possible Peltola would not be seated if she wins because of the controversy. Peltola’s campaign did not respond to the Post’s request for comment on the senator’s remarks; she held a roughly 2-percentage-point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average in the race’s closing days.

Current Status

Peltola remains the Democratic nominee and the race goes to a ranked-choice vote on November 3, with more than 61,000 ballots already cast through Tuesday. Her campaign faces a governor-ordered Department of Public Safety investigation into whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted over the recruiting scheme — no charges have been filed, and Dunleavy himself framed the outcome as open: “The evidence will determine what happens next.” The Justice Department’s pre-emptive certification lawsuit ended on Sunday, November 1, when Chief Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed it two days before the vote: the relief it sought was “infeasible” with so many ballots already cast, the government offered “no workable plan” to investigate votes for Daniel J. Sullivan without breaking ballot secrecy, and its footing ran counter to the Constitution and the Purcell principle. In the race’s final days the FBI was at donors’ doors in Alaska and Massachusetts asking whether contributions had gone to the Sullivan they intended, and the department issued a raft of new grand jury subpoenas over the decoy candidate’s presence on the ballot — an active federal criminal probe in which no one has been charged. The September staff-treatment allegations, by contrast, have produced no legal action of any kind — and neither has the n-word account the Post amplified two days before the vote; Peltola has not independently addressed them beyond her campaign’s statements. The episode followed a pre-primary shakeup in which her campaign manager, chief of staff, and two veteran contractors were fired or reassigned shortly before the August 18 primary — upheaval the campaign downplayed at the time.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The staff-treatment allegations transformed the central narrative of Peltola’s Senate campaign from a competitive underdog race into a referendum on her temperament and management style, handing the Sullivan campaign a ready-made line of attack and putting her cheerful “Nice Mary” persona under scrutiny by a press normally sympathetic to her. The ballot-scheme scandal compounds that damage with a formal criminal investigation aimed at her campaign in the final week before the election, a Justice Department lawsuit over the result itself since dismissed by a federal judge, and a Republican message — prosecution, removal from the ballot, even refusing to seat her — that follows her through Election Day even as legal observers note ballot-stacking is a lawful, bipartisan practice that has never sent anyone to prison. Whatever the DPS probe concludes, the twin scandals have made the final stretch of the race a test of voter trust rather than the policy contest her party had planned for.

Sources

• New York Post, “Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola accused of shoving male aide — as ex-staffers throw fit over use of ‘retard,’ gay slur”, Sep. 24, 2026. source
• Alaska’s News Source (KTUU), “Peltola avoids questions over NYT story documenting volatile behavior towards staff”, Sep. 23, 2026. source
• The Alaska Story, “The other side of Mary Peltola: Former aides describe outbursts, slurs and firings”, Sep. 24, 2026. source
• New York Post, “Alaska governor orders probe of Mary Peltola Senate campaign over ‘Decoy Dan’ Sullivan scandal”, Oct. 29, 2026. source
• The New York Times, “Alaska Governor Orders Criminal Investigation Into Peltola Campaign”, Oct. 28, 2026. source
• Associated Press (via Twincities.com), “Alaska’s governor orders a probe into Peltola’s Senate campaign”, Oct. 29, 2026. source
• New York Post, “Alaska Senate candidate Dan J. Sullivan’s donors contacted by FBI”, Nov. 1, 2026. source
• Alaska Landmine, “Mary Peltola used the ’n-word’ multiple times in 2024, former staffers allege”, early Oct. 2026. source
• New York Post, “AOC-backed Alaska Senate hopeful Mary Peltola accused of using n-word”, Nov. 1, 2026. source
• New York Post, “DOJ suit tossed as feds fought certification of Alaska Senate race over ‘Decoy Dan’ Sullivan scandal”, Nov. 1, 2026. source
• New York Post, “Alaska Sen. Sullivan warns alleged ‘Decoy Dan’ scheme is working”, Nov. 1, 2026. source