Mary Peltola, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate, is set to visit Cordova next week to rally additional support ahead of the Nov. 3 General Election.
Peltola, who also formerly represented Alaska in the U.S. House of Representatives, is scheduled to host a meet and greet at the Reluctant Fisherman Inn on Oct. 7. The event begins at 5 p.m.
The candidate first made waves in 2022 when she ran to fill longtime Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young’s seat after he died earlier that year. Peltola, the first Alaska Native person and Democrat elected to the House in decades, won a successive regular term but was ousted by Republican Nick Begich III in 2024.
Peltola is now running to un-seat Republican Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan.
However the Democrat’s Cordova campaign stop comes less than two weeks after a New York Times exposé revealed Peltola, during her time in the House, allegedly exhibited volatile behavior toward people in her circle. That behavior, according to the Times, apparently included angry and profane outbursts, using inappropriate language and homophobic slurs, mass staff firings, and even physically shoving an aide.
Peltola’s campaign “denied any pattern of abusive behavior,” The Times reported, but acknowledged she struggled after the 2023 deaths of both her mother and her husband, the latter of which died in a plane crash.
“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,” campaign spokesperson Harry Child told The New York Times. “Exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong.”
Even amid the controversy, Peltola’s support among Alaska Democrats still seems relatively strong. Her campaign supports fishing, especially subsistence fishing, as well as abortion access, oil extraction, and environmental regulations.
Sullivan, the Republican incumbent for the past 11 years, is running a re-election bid to reduce trawling bycatch, open more of Alaska’s energy potential, cut taxes, combat domestic violence, and continue funding the military.
It is unclear if Sullivan’s team is planning a trip to Cordova before Election Day.
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