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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/27\/us\/politics\/mary-peltola-alaska-senate.html?emc=edit_ufn_20260927&nl=from-the-times&segment_id=227162",
    "parsed_content": "National Citizenship DatabaseWhen to Vote in Your StateLatest PollsCompetitive RacesSeat Pickups\u2018She\u2019s One of Us\u2019: Mary Peltola\u2019s Bumpy Rise to Political PowerMs. Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska, has complicated politics: She is pro-gun, pro-oil and pro-gas \u2014 but also pro-environment and especially pro-fish.Credit...Ash Adams for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexSearch & Section NavigationSection NavigationAccountAccountGoHome U.S.SECTIONSU.S.PoliticsNew YorkCaliforniaEducationHealthObituariesScienceClimateWeatherSportsBusinessTechThe UpshotThe MagazineTOP STORIESDonald TrumpSupreme CourtCongressImmigrationAbortionLatest PollsNEWSLETTERSThe MorningMake sense of the day\u2019s news and ideas.The EveningCatch up on big news, and wind down to end your day.See all newslettersPODCASTSThe DailyThe biggest stories of our time, in 20 minutes a day.See all podcastsWorldSECTIONSWorldAfricaAmericasAsiaAustraliaCanadaEuropeMiddle EastScienceClimateWeatherHealthObituariesTOP STORIESMiddle East CrisisRussia-Ukraine WarChina International RelationsThe Global ProfileLeer en Espa\u00f1olNEWSLETTERSThe WorldA guide to understanding the news, made for readers around the globe.Your Places: Global UpdateThe latest news for any part of the world you select.Canada LetterBackstories and analysis from our Canadian correspondents.See all newslettersBusinessSECTIONSBusinessTechEconomyMediaFinance and MarketsDealBookPersonal TechEnergy TransitionYour MoneyTOP STORIESU.S. EconomyStock MarketArtificial IntelligenceNEWSLETTERSDealBookThe most crucial business and policy news you need to know.On TechOur best tech reporting from the week.See all newslettersPODCASTSHard ForkOur tech journalists help you make sense of the rapidly changing tech world.See all podcastsArtsSECTIONSToday's ArtsBook ReviewBest SellersDanceMoviesMusicTelevisionTheaterPop CultureT MagazineVisual ArtsRECOMMENDATIONS100 Best Movies of the 21st CenturyCritic\u2019s PicksWhat to ReadWhat to WatchWhat to Listen To5 Minutes to Make You Love MusicNEWSLETTERSBooksReviews, news and features to help you find your next read.WatchingStreaming TV and movie recommendations.See all newslettersPODCASTSBook ReviewThe podcast that takes you inside the literary world.PopcastPop music news, new songs and albums, and artists of note.See all podcastsLifestyleSECTIONSAll LifestyleWellTravelStyleReal EstateFoodLoveYour MoneyPersonal TechT MagazineCOLUMNS36 HoursAsk WellThe HuntModern LoveWhere to EatVowsSocial Q\u2019sThe EthicistAsk the TherapistNEWSLETTERSThe WeekenderUnwind with stories about culture and the way we live.WellEssential news and guidance to live your healthiest life.See all newslettersPODCASTSModern LoveThe complicated love lives of real people.See all podcastsOpinionSECTIONSOpinionGuest EssaysEditorialsOp-DocsVideosLettersTOPICSPoliticsWorldBusinessTechClimateHealthCultureCOLUMNISTSJamelle BouieMaureen DowdDavid FrenchThomas L. 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Go to WirecutterReviewsKitchenTechSleepAppliancesHome and GardenMovingTravelGiftsDealsBaby and KidHealth and FitnessThe Best...Air PurifierElectric ToothbrushPressure WasherCordless Stick VacuumOffice ChairRobot VacuumNewslettersThe RecommendationThe best independent reviews, expert advice and intensively researched deals.Clean EverythingStep-by-step advice on how to keep everything in your home squeaky clean.See all newslettersThe AthleticPersonalized coverage of your sports teams and leagues. Go to The AthleticLEAGUESN.F.L.N.B.A.N.H.L.Premier LeagueM.L.B.College FootballN.C.A.A. Men\u2019sN.C.A.A. Women\u2019sTennisF1Fantasy & BettingW.N.B.A.TOP STORIESToday's HeadlinesN.F.L. Win ProjectionsNEWSLETTERSThe PulseDelivering the top stories in sports, Sunday to Friday.See all newslettersPLAYConnections: Sports Edition Connections: Soccer Edition Connections Coach U.S.InternationalCanadaEspa\u00f1ol\u4e2d\u6587\u2018She\u2019s One of Us\u2019: Mary Peltola\u2019s Bumpy Rise to Political PowerMs. Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska, has complicated politics: She is pro-gun, pro-oil and pro-gas \u2014 but also pro-environment and especially pro-fish.Credit...Ash Adams for The New York TimesSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTListen \u00b7 19:51 min Share full articleBy Michael KruseMichael Kruse chartered a boat and took seven flights in Alaska for this profile of Mary Peltola, reporting from Fairbanks, Anchorage, Bethel, Kwethluk and Kodiak.Sept. 27, 2026Updated 1:17 p.m. ETHard by the murky brown water of the Kuskokwim River, in a region reachable only by plane or boat, past weather-stunted willows and crude seasonal fish camps, dogs roamed muddy, rutted roads under low, dreary skies.Here in the small village of Kwethluk in the vast tundra of southwestern Alaska, in the window of a house with unpainted sides and rotting wood steps, was a campaign placard for Mary Peltola.\u201cWe are related,\u201d said the man inside.James Nicori, 77, sat in his chair and unspooled his Alaska Native connection to Ms. Peltola, the Democrat running for the Senate.\u201cMary\u2019s great-grandma and my grandpa were half sister, half brother,\u201d Mr. Nicori said. Her mother was a girl here, Mr. Nicori said. She was a girl here.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cShe understands how we struggle,\u201d he said. \u201cShe is one of us.\u201dImage\u201cShe is one of us,\u201d James Nicori said of Mary Peltola.Credit...Katie Basile for The New York TimesMs. Peltola, a former congresswoman, is an uncommonly capable candidate. In Alaska, where Republicans far outnumber Democrats and independents far outnumber both, she is the rare member of her party who has proved she can win statewide. This year, she has campaigned on four-wheelers and floatplanes, in Xtratuf boots and traditional kuspuk shirts worn by the Indigenous Yup\u2019ik people of Alaska. She has made stops in locales as isolated as an island 30-some miles from Russia, curating social media snippets while playing hard-to-get with most of the mainstream press four time zones away. The approach has been largely effective. Ms. Peltola beat the Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan, in the nonpartisan primary in August, and polling and fund-raising suggest she could do it again in November.But in ways that have not been aired until now, Ms. Peltola, 53, is also an uncommonly complicated candidate. Genial and unassuming in public, she can be crass and apoplectic in private. Her campaign has been marred by accounts of her outbursts that left some aides unnerved. When she served in the House, she had one of the highest staff turnover rates on Capitol Hill.The daughter of a Yup\u2019ik woman from Alaska and a white man from Nebraska, Ms. Peltola grew up in three villages and the port city of Bethel, population 6,000, some 70 miles upcountry from the Bering Sea. She went to three different high schools and four different colleges. She has had three husbands \u2014 two children from her first, two more from her second, three stepchildren from her third \u2014 and moved from Bethel to Juneau to Anchorage and back.ImageA dirt road runs past St. Nicholas Orthodox Church and through the village of Kwethluk, Alaska.Credit...Katie Basile for The New York TimesHer politics are complicated, too, reflecting the idiosyncrasies of her state: She is pro-gun, pro-oil and pro-gas \u2014 but also pro-environment and especially pro-fish.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAnd she is, at root, a person whose people\u2019s way of life is dying after decades of disruption to salmon fishing, the cascading consequences of climate change, corporate excess and government restrictions. There are fewer fish and more limits on fishing. People smile, but grievance stews.In the Kwethluk Native Store, next to the sparse shelves with $6 canned chili and $7 jars of jelly, a sign warned that it was illegal to sell food stamps. In the Kwethluk Sport Store, a hand-drawn notice urged shoppers to stop huffing gas to get high.Along another dirt road, in the house of another one of Ms. Peltola\u2019s many relatives in Kwethluk, almost 1,000 miles from the state capital of Juneau and almost 4,000 from Washington, D.C., a wood stove burned.\u201cIt\u2019s getting to be hard to live,\u201d said Alexie Nicolai, 73.A single bulb lit the room, and a cross hung on the wall.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cMy uncle, he used to tell us, \u2018All the animals will go toward the ocean to die,\u2019\u201d Mr. Nicolai said. \u201cHe would tell us, \u2018When starvation comes, it will come not just overnight, but slowly.\u2019\u201dEmma Maxie Nicolai and Alexie Nicolai outside their home in Kwethluk. Inside their home, an icon of St. Olga of Kwethluk and plants sitting on a windowsill.Credit...Katie Basile for The New York Times\u2018To know who you are\u2019On her first political campaign, she was in the womb.In early 1973, in the special election that kick-started the congressional career of Don Young, Alaska\u2019s longtime Republican representative, two of his most ardent aides were the expectant parents of Ms. Peltola.Ward Sattler, a teacher and small-plane pilot from the Great Plains, was Mr. Young\u2019s district chairman. Liz Ann Andrew, \u201can Eskimo interpreter,\u201d in the phrasing of a local newspaper, was an indefatigable canvasser, snowmobiling from village to village in subzero conditions.Ms. Peltola was born five and a half months after Mr. Young won.She grew up in Bethel, Kwethluk (with a population of roughly 500 at the time), Tuntutuliak (300), Platinum (50) and Bethel again, as her parents split up. She ate moose and seal and spent her summers on the Kuskokwim, captaining tender boats and cleaning, drying and smoking salmon.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cShe was doing the things that I would traditionally put in the male category,\u201d one of her best friends, Ana Hoffman, said this month in Bethel. \u201cShe didn\u2019t wait for a guy to come back up the boat. She would back up the boat.\u201dImageAna Hoffman, president and chief executive of Bethel Native Corporation and a longtime friend of Ms. Peltola, outside her home in Bethel, Alaska.Credit...Katie Basile for The New York TimesMs. Peltola spent her sophomore year in high school at a boarding school in Bethlehem, Pa.; her junior year at Bethel Regional; and her senior year in Fort Collins, Colo., where her grandmother lived.She went to the University of Northern Colorado, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Southeast and the University of Alaska Anchorage \u2014 but never graduated.ImageMs. Peltola was crowned Miss National Congress of American Indians in 1995.Credit...Brian WallaceAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAs a college student, she was the runner-up for the Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics in 1993 and then crowned Miss National Congress of American Indians in 1995, performing two Yup\u2019ik dances and wearing a wolf-hair headdress when she won.In an article about her achievement, she said she wanted to get into politics. \u201cI just have this fire inside me,\u201d she told The Juneau Empire, \u201cwhen I start reading these cases about Indian rights.\u201dShe was an intern in the State Legislature in 1996. That year, at the age of 23, she ran to be a representative herself and barely lost. In 1998, the year she married for the first time, she ran again.Then known as Mary Sattler, she campaigned for the State House as a Democrat, prioritizing would-be voters in villages. \u201cVillagers say Sattler is a kass\u2019amirteq, meaning someone who acts like a white person,\u201d a reporter from The Anchorage Daily News wrote that August. Her campaign manager, who spoke better Yup\u2019ik than she did, doubled as her interpreter.She gave birth to a son in October, posing with him and her husband in an ad in the local newspaper, The Tundra Drums. \u201cI will work hard to make sure our rural way of life is protected,\u201d she wrote. \u201cOur people need protection from outside interests determining how we hunt and live.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTShe was elected that November.\u201cI\u2019d explain that my mom is from Kwethluk, my dad was a schoolteacher in these villages,\u201d Ms. Peltola said this month in Fairbanks in an interview with The New York Times.\u201cI think it\u2019s important for people to know who you are,\u201d she said, \u201cso they understand your back story.\u201dImageAt the State Capitol in Juneau, Ms. Peltola worked to reduce teen alcohol abuse and appealed for more state aid for rural areas.Credit...Associated Press\u2018I am made of fish\u2019In the 10 years she spent at the Capitol in Juneau, Ms. Peltola was chair of the \u201cbush caucus,\u201d the bipartisan group representing Alaska\u2019s most remote regions. She worked to reduce teen alcohol abuse, stressed the importance of teaching the Yup\u2019ik language and appealed for more state aid for rural areas. \u201cWe\u2019re sitting,\u201d she told a local reporter, \u201con a powder keg of poverty and resentment.\u201dSign up for the On Politics newsletter. It's a pivotal moment for American politics. Join us for 2026 and beyond. Get it sent to your inbox.She started meetings in her office, where she served her colleagues salmon. She befriended Lisa Murkowski, then a fellow state representative, now Alaska\u2019s other Republican senator.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cShe was very sure of herself,\u201d said Ethan Berkowitz, a former state representative and the minority leader at the time. \u201cShe\u2019s incredibly proud of her Yup\u2019ik heritage, but she was able to walk in both worlds.\u201dAlong the way, too, she had another son, divorced, remarried and had a third son and a daughter. Managing an increasingly topsy-turvy personal life, she also missed votes nearly 20 percent of the time, according to records \u2014 in part a result of having and caring for her kids.She did not run for re-election in 2008. She separated from her second husband in 2009 \u2014 the same year she got together with her third.In 2010, she helped Ms. Murkowski with her Senate campaign, and she was on the Bethel City Council from 2011 to 2013. She helped the community get a public indoor pool but missed more than a third of the votes.Away from public office, she worked for a gold-mining project and as a lobbyist.And the fish crisis mostly kept getting worse. The Yup\u2019iks of the Kuskokwim couldn\u2019t fish the way their people had fished for thousands of years. In an attempt at conservation, state and federal restrictions now determined when, how and how much they could fish, a scenario utterly counter to their culture of subsistence, severing the rhythms of generations and upending their relationship with the river and the salmon.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIn 2017, in an interview with The Associated Press, Ms. Peltola likened the state of affairs to \u201ca family member being sick.\u201dThat year, she became the executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, an intermediary between Alaska Natives and the outside agencies establishing and enforcing the rules and regulations.\u201cLike nearly everyone raised on the Kuskokwim, I am made of fish,\u201d she wrote in 2020 in the commission\u2019s annual report. \u201cNot only do I crave eating fish year-round, but by May and June, I physically feel the need to catch and process fish.\u201dBut things were different now.\u201cI have had to adjust my mind-set,\u201d she wrote, \u201cbecause there are fewer fish.\u201dAnd then, in 2022, the death of Representative Don Young led to a wide-open scramble of a special election.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe day of Mr. Young\u2019s memorial service on Capitol Hill, Ms. Murkowski got a text from Ms. Peltola, according to the book Ms. Murkowski published last year. She wanted advice. She was thinking about getting into the race, calling it \u201cthe most crowded clown car ever.\u201dMs. Peltola jumped in.\u201cOne thing led to another,\u201d she told The Times, \u201cand of all the unlikely circumstances. \u2026\u201dShe won.\u2018Really different values\u2019Ms. Murkowski worried for her.Ms. Peltola, she thought, according to her book, was \u201ca warm, positive, smart and authentic Yup\u2019ik woman.\u201d Now she was in Washington. \u201cI thought of her mostly as a friend and mom suddenly in the middle of the complex, high-pressure world of the House with no time to prepare,\u201d wrote Ms. Murkowski, who declined a request to comment for this story. \u201cI offered her my son\u2019s room to stay in and tried to make sure she got fed.\u201dMs. Peltola wore Native mukluk boots to her swearing-in, alongside her third husband, Eugene Peltola Jr., her children and his. \u201cI am humbled and deeply honored to be the first Alaska Native elected to this body, the first woman to hold Alaska\u2019s House seat,\u201d she said in her first floor speech.She won again in the regular election in November, earning a full two-year term. She joined the moderate Blue Dog caucus as well as the Western caucus \u2014 \u201c106 Republicans,\u201d as she said, \u201cand me.\u201d She was one of the most bipartisan Democrats, bucking her party on guns, border security and oil and gas extraction.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTImageMs. Peltola in the early morning hours of Election Day in 2022.Credit...Ash Adams for The New York TimesImageIn Washington, Ms. Peltola was one of the most bipartisan Democrats, bucking her party on guns, border security and oil and gas extraction.Credit...Haiyun Jiang\/The New York TimesShe also missed more than 17 percent of the votes \u2014 significantly more than most of her peers. And her uneven temperament was an all but open secret.\u201cEverybody who knows anything about her, she has two things: a terrible work ethic and a terrible temper,\u201d Art Hackney, a longtime Alaska-based Republican strategist who supports Mr. Sullivan, said in an interview this month in Anchorage.In May of her first full year in Congress, her mother died. Four months later, she lost her husband. Mr. Peltola, 57, piloting a small plane, was hauling the antlers and meat of a moose that a group of hunters had killed. He labored to take off from their tundra site, according to the National Transportation Safety Board report, and crashed on the side of a hill in low-lying bushes and shrubs. The closest hospital was 400 miles away. One of the hunters unbuckled his lap belt and covered him in blankets. Mr. Peltola died in less than two hours.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAmid her grief, Ms. Peltola lost her 2024 re-election bid, to Nick Begich, a Republican \u2014 albeit by less than three points in a year when President Trump won Alaska by 14. She moved to Anchorage and was hired by a lobbying firm, making more than $340,000, according to a financial disclosure. Last fall, she was, briefly, a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, teaching a seminar she titled \u201cBlood Lines: What Does Being Native Even Mean?\u201dAll the while, Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, worked to persuade her to run for the Senate. He considered her one of his top recruits.\u201cShe is special,\u201d said Lauren French, a Senate Majority PAC spokeswoman. \u201cShe has everything that it takes to be really successful there.\u201dMs. Peltola thought so, too.\u201cI know that there\u2019s a tendency to say people are half something, half another,\u201d Ms. Peltola told The Times. \u201cBut I always thought of it as double. I really had, you know, double the language, double the perspectives, really different perspectives, really different values, really different worldviews \u2014 but double. And I thought that was a huge advantage.\u201dBehind the scenesAll summer long, she was all over \u2014 in Alakanuk and Savoonga and Nome, in Gambell and Galena and Unalakleet, in Dutch Harbor and Fort Yukon and Tok \u2014 listening to voters in school gyms, union halls and community theaters, hugging, waving and smiling on Facebook, Instagram and X.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIn August, though, her campaign was on its way to a primary win and simultaneously in disarray. She fired a top adviser. She fired a deputy campaign manager. She changed her campaign manager. She made headlines for distancing herself from former Vice President Kamala Harris, who had issued a fund-raising appeal on her behalf.Behind the scenes, as The Times reported last week, she could be a mercurial boss, with some former aides describing her as sometimes angry and profane. A spokesman for the campaign denied any pattern of abusive behavior. \u201cLike any person who has gone through multiple personal tragedies in the span of a few months, Mary sometimes struggled to deal with her grief,\u201d a campaign spokesman said.Through it all, Ms. Peltola was dealing with the legal fallout from her husband\u2019s death. She was worried about her children.Her staff made her scarce to the mainstream press, providing scant details about where she would be campaigning. She was running what she called an \u201cAlaska first\u201d campaign, her staff insisted, focused on talking to Alaskans, not reporters from Washington or New York.But on the ground, the arm\u2019s-length strategy made more sense. During recent events in Fairbanks, Ms. Peltola didn\u2019t sound simply off script. At times, she sounded as if she had no script.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cI\u2019ll admit to you, every single place I go, I don\u2019t go to the grocery store, I don\u2019t go to the gas station, I don\u2019t go to community events unless I have my passport,\u201d she told a crowd that had packed a community center. She wore a blue flannel shirt and glasses with white rims. \u201cBecause early in this administration there was talk about ICE deporting Natives back to wherever it is they came from,\u201d she said. \u201cMy mom\u2019s family walked across the land bridge from Mongolia. \u2026\u201dPeople laughed.\u201cWe laugh,\u201d she said, \u201cat the things we\u2019re most scared of.\u201dThe next afternoon, at a different community center in Fairbanks, she said she had forgotten to help her 18-year-old daughter register to vote in the primary in August \u2014 but promised she would be registered for November.She said that when she grew up in Alaska, it was \u201ca state of abundance,\u201d and that now \u201cwe are being starved out and nobody even cares.\u201dShe said she wasn\u2019t even feeling \u201caspirational\u201d anymore \u2014 and just wanted to \u201cget back to where we were in 1999.\u201dImageMs. Peltola and her Republican opponent, Senator Dan Sullivan, at a conference in Anchorage late last month.Credit...Kerry Tasker\/ReutersAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTA few days later, at Alaska\u2019s Senate Fisheries Debate in Kodiak, on the third anniversary of the death of her third husband, she wore salmon-shaped earrings made from the tusk of a walrus and asked moderators to repeat questions.\u201cCan you restate it please?\u201d\u201cSay it again?\u201dTo succeed statewide here, said John-Henry Heckendorn, an Anchorage-based Democratic strategist, a Democrat must assemble a convoluted coalition almost at odds with itself \u2014 Natives and not, rural and not, commercial fishermen and subsistence fishermen, on and on.\u201cMary\u2019s political talent,\u201d he said, \u201chas been her ability to inhabit those tensions.\u201dShe inhabits those tensions because she is born of those tensions. Ms. Peltola is Alaska and Nebraska, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and the Lower 48, Yup\u2019ik collectivism and American individualism. Being \u201cdouble\u201d can be an advantage, she says, and she is not wrong. It also, though, can be a source of some untenable tug.She is leading by a bit in polling and by a lot in fund-raising, but voters in Alaska are characteristically contrarian and unpredictable. This race, say independent analysts, could go either way.On a recent rainy, windy evening in Anchorage, at a canvassing kickoff at an Alaska Democratic Party field office, Ms. Peltola was introduced by the former president of the Alaska A.F.L.-C.I.O. Ms. Peltola was wearing black Adidas and a kuspuk. She touched her face and smiled, looked out at her supporters and began her speech.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cWhere do you even start?\u201d she said.Kitty Bennett, Sheelagh McNeill and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.From the commentsMichael KrusePolitics correspondentMary Peltola is one of the most important candidates in November's midterm elections. She's also one of the most complicated characters. It's why I flew 10,000 miles and chartered a boat to report this profile, traveling to courthouses, campaign events and the remote village of Kwethluk in the tundra of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.Michael KrusePolitics correspondentIn many ways, she embodies the frictions and idiosyncrasies of her one-of-a-kind, out-of-the-way state. How the voters of Alaska think about Ms. Peltola might very well determine the partisan balance of power in the country heading into next year.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
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    "merged_at": "2026-09-30T12:02:41.963536Z"
}