Former Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Alaska, is facing damaging allegations from her own former staff, who say she has a history of “outbursts” that left aides alarmed, according to a New York Times report published Wednesday night.
Peltola is running against Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, in a contest the Cook Political Report rates as a toss-up.
The Times spoke with nine former staffers who described multiple episodes in which Peltola allegedly turned her anger on aides and others who had crossed her. The former staffers asked not to be named, citing fears of retaliation and concerns about protecting their professional reputations.
Four of the former aides said they heard Peltola use the slur “fggot” more than once, including in reference to members of her own staff. Peltola’s campaign denies that claim. The former aides also said Peltola used the word “rtard.”
According to the sources, Peltola also placed unusual demands on her team. In one case, they said, she had an aide feed live crickets to her pet chameleon, Meatball.
In August, Peltola fired several staff members. Former staffers said the dismissals came at the tail end of one of her alleged outbursts.
Peltola declined to sit down with the Times for the story. Her campaign, however, told the paper she has struggled after losing both her mother and her husband, Eugene, in 2023. Eugene died in a plane crash.
“At the time of their passing, Mary was parenting kids through their own grief, serving full-time in the U.S. House of Representatives thousands of miles from home, and running a competitive re-election campaign — all while shouldering the enormous burden of grief,” campaign spokesman Harry Child said. “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.”
Child pushed back hard on the reporting. “Exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong,” he said.
Former aides also told the Times about an incident in which Peltola allegedly shoved a staffer. The campaign denies that accusation as well.
The report also detailed Peltola’s reaction during her 2024 reelection bid, when a Planned Parenthood regional board member scrutinized her deliberations over how to vote on a defense bill containing anti-abortion policies.
“I hope Planned Parenthood knows that if we don’t win it’s more their loss than ours. FUCK THOSE BITCHES,” Peltola wrote in a January 2024 text message to her staff, which the Times reviewed.
In a separate text exchange, Peltola was reportedly annoyed after a commercial fishing executive posted a photo of the two of them together, which created problems for her because she opposes large-scale trawling. In those messages, Peltola called the executive a “r*tard” and wrote, “I nothing him,” a dismissive phrase sometimes heard on the TV show “Scrubs.”
Peltola’s campaign conceded to the Times that her use of the word was inappropriate.
The Times reported that the environment in Peltola’s office rattled staff members, some of whom were brought to tears and frequently talked about quitting. Some former aides said the emotional toll caused them to lose weight, while others turned to therapy to cope with the stress.
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