By SUZANNE DOWNING
July 9, 2026 – As former Alaska congresswoman Mary Peltola seeks a promotion to US Senate, her legislative record from the 118th Congress is a campaign issue that is showing up on ads opposing her attempt to unseat US Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Peltola, a Democrat, represented Alaska’s lone seat in the US House from September 2022 through January 2025 after winning the special election following the death of Rep. Don Young. She won primarily because Sarah Palin jumped into the race at the last minute and split the conservative vote. Ranked choice voting contributed because so many voters would not rank Palin as their second choice, but chose Peltola instead.
During her tenure, Peltola cultivated an image as a bipartisan lawmaker focused on fisheries, resource development, veterans, and Alaska Native issues.
But the statistical record compiled by GovTrack paints the picture of a freshman member who could not build legislative influence and whose attendance record ranked at the bottom Congress.
According to GovTrack’s analysis of the 118th Congress, Peltola introduced 23 bills and resolutions during her two-year term. Thirty-four percent of them were bills dealing with Alaska Native issues. None became law, either as standalone legislation or through incorporation into larger enacted bills.
GovTrack placed her in the 0th percentile in that category compared to her House colleagues.
Only three of her bills even advanced out of committee for floor consideration. They were all Alaska Native topics:
- H.R. 2687, dealing with Alaska Native Settlement Trust eligibility.
- H.R. 4748, concerning unrecognized Southeast Alaska Native communities.
- H.R. 6489, involving Alaska Native village municipal lands.
None became law.
GovTrack also found that Peltola attracted relatively little support for her own legislation. Her bills received a combined 40 cosponsors during the 118th Congress, placing her at the bottom — in the 4th percentile among House Democrats and the 6th percentile among all representatives.
Its leadership analysis, which measures a member’s ability to attract other lawmakers to support legislation, likewise ranked Peltola near the bottom of the House Democratic caucus, placing her in the 4th percentile among House Democrats.
Perhaps the most striking statistic was attendance. She was absent for more votes than all but nine other members of the House.
During her time in Congress, Peltola missed 235 of 1,370 recorded roll-call votes, or 17.2% The median for House members serving at the end of 2024 was just 2.2%.
As the 10th most absent voting member of the House during the period she served, that absenteeism occurred during the summer of 2023, when she missed 158 of 224 votes—more than 70% —as she took leave for subsistence fishing, even though she resided in Anchorage. Four of those missed votes were following the death of her husband, Eugene “Buzzy” Peltola Jr. on Sept. 12, 2023.
And again, she missed more than one-third of House votes during the third quarter of 2024.
Conservative advocacy organization Heritage Action gave Peltola an 18% score for the 118th Congress, measuring how often her votes aligned with conservative positions
Among the votes Heritage Action scored, Peltola:
- Supported multiple federal spending packages in 2023 and 2024.
- Voted against the Secure the Border Act.
- Voted against the Limit, Save, Grow Act addressing the debt ceiling.
- Opposed the impeachment of Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
- Supported the $95 billion foreign aid package that included additional funding for Ukraine.
- Supported the Respect for Marriage Act, for LGBTQ marriage legality.
Peltola voted against the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act (H.R. 497). The 2023 legislation sought to nullify the federal rule that mandated Covid-19 vaccinations for health care staff at facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding.
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