Mary Peltola is a Yup’ik woman and the first Alaska Native in Congress.
Mary Peltola is a Democrat who, as a child, campaigned with her father and his friend, the state’s longtime Republican congressman. Later, she helped reelect a Republican senator. And she’s friendly with Sarah Palin, the state’s former governor who popularized the kind of combative, anti-establishment politics that propelled Donald Trump to the White House.
“She is progressive, especially socially,” Lindsay Kavanaugh, executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, said of Peltola. “She is an Alaska Democrat” and “she’s probably, compared to a Lower 48 Democrat, she is a little more moderate.”
Peltola scored a stunning upset Wednesday, winning a special election for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat, defeating Palin and Nick Begich III (R), a business executive and familiar name in state politics. When she is sworn in, Peltola will make history as the state’s first woman in the House, the first Native Alaskan — she is Yup’ik — and the first Democrat to hold the seat in a half-century.
The win came on her 49th birthday, which she called a “GOOD DAY” in a tweet right after the state elections division released preliminary results from its new ranked-choice voting system.
“It is overwhelming. And it’s a very good feeling. I’m very grateful Alaskans have put their trust in me,” Peltola said in an interview with The shortly after her victory at the office of her campaign consultants, where she had to break away in the middle of the conversation to take a call from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “I will be immediately going to work.”
Peltola will serve the remaining four months of the term of Rep. Don Young (R), the longest-serving Republican in Congress, who died in March at age 88. She is also a candidate in the November election for the full two-year term to replace Young.
Peltola was born in 1973 — the year Young was first elected to the House — and raised in rural parts of the state. Her father and Young were close and, the New York Times reported, she would tag along when her father would campaign for Young.
She studied early education at the University of Northern Colorado, and in the summers worked as a herring and salmon technician for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
In 1996, Peltola interned at the state legislature, and later that year ran for a seat to represent the Bethel region, a major hub in the western part of the state.
