Allegations about Mary Peltola’s treatment of staff have done little to shift voters in Alaska’s closely fought Senate race, with many supporters and opponents retreating into their partisan camps.
Ms Peltola, a Democrat and former congresswoman, is challenging Republican Senator Dan Sullivan in the contest. Republicans have condemned claims that she subjected staff to angry outbursts and offensive language, while Democrats have largely stood by her, arguing that winning the seat matters more than questions about her personal conduct.
Some Democratic supporters even suggested the reports could reinforce Ms Peltola’s image as a tough, blue-collar politician in an independent-minded state.
“It doesn’t move the needle one iota for me,” said Cameron Sanders, a small-business owner in Anchorage who said he intended to vote for Ms Peltola because of his opposition to tariffs and rising health care costs, as well as his desire to remove Mr Sullivan from office.
Alfred Sturmann, a retiree encountered at Fairbanks airport, said he was sceptical of claims made by former members of Ms Peltola’s staff. But he added: “If it really is so, I would be a little bit disappointed that she would act like this.”
Mr Sturmann said he would vote for Ms Peltola regardless. She won an upset victory in 2022 to take Alaska’s sole House seat for the Democrats and had previously been regarded as a warm and friendly figure in state politics, including by Republicans.
The allegations come from nine former aides, who said she had a history of angry and profane outbursts directed at staff and others. Some recalled her using a homophobic slur, while another allegation claimed she shoved a member of staff in her congressional office.
Messages attributed to Ms Peltola also included an offensive use of the word “retarded”, derogatory comments about Planned Parenthood and a remark expressing a hope that a member of its board would “dies of a botched abortion.”
Her campaign has rejected or challenged several of the claims, including the allegations involving the slur and the alleged shove. It said she regretted using the word “retarded”, and argued that many of the incidents took place soon after the deaths of her mother and her husband, Eugene, who was known as Buzzy, in 2023. He 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,” Harry Child, a campaign spokesman, said. “Exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong.”
Republicans have seized on the reports. Alex Latcham, executive director of the Republican Senate Leadership Fund super PAC, said the accusations made Ms Peltola “entirely unfit for the US Senate”.
Mr Sullivan said he was saddened for the Alaskan staff members “who had to live with these experiences”.
“I think character matters in every race,” he said. “I think Alaskans expect their senator’s actions behind closed doors to be the same when they’re outside of closed doors.”
Alaska Democrats have sought to move the campaign past the allegations, at one point making light of a complaint that Ms Peltola required staff to feed live crickets to her family’s pet chameleon, Meatball.
“Alaskans everywhere wish Meatball well, and hope our state gets more coverage on things that actually matter,” the state Democratic Party said.
Scott Kendall, an independent Anchorage attorney who previously worked for Republicans, said he doubted the claims would alter a race largely shaped by economic pressures and Alaska’s high cost of living.
“The inherent irony here is you have a lot of progressives rushing to defend really, really unfortunate language that they would disavow in anyone else,” Mr Kendall said. “And you have a lot of conservatives rushing to condemn language where if it came out of the president’s mouth or someone else’s mouth, they would say, ‘Don’t be so fragile.’”
Some Democrats have questioned the allegations, while others online have embraced them as evidence that Ms Peltola is a hard operator, saying her conduct mattered less than helping Democrats secure a Senate majority.
Ashley Hensel, a health care worker in Anchorage, said the allegations had changed her view of Ms Peltola, even though they were unlikely to change her vote.
“One of the reasons that I vote Democrat, or I lean that way, is because I really feel strongly that we should create psychologically safe environments for people,” Ms Hensel said. The language Ms Peltola was accused of using, she added, “make other people feel small and less than, and I am not in favor of that.”
