By SUZANNE DOWNING
Aug. 31, 2026 – Mary Peltola is campaigning for the US Senate as an enemy of big money, corporate influence, and the entrenched political class.
Her own campaign-finance history, including a summer fundraising swing through California, has all the big money, corporate influence, and entrenched political class that she opposes.
In a campaign platform titled “Fixing the Rigged System,” Peltola says she has “had enough” of dark-money special-interest groups flooding the airwaves during election season. She promises to work toward putting super PAC spending “behind us,” imposing term limits on members of Congress and preventing politicians from profiting from public office.
Peltola and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have used a joint ActBlue fundraising page declaring that the two politicians “take $0 from corporations.”
That statement is barely true: Federal law already prohibits corporations from contributing money directly to federal candidates.
Corporations may, however, establish and support separate political action committees. Those PACs can contribute directly to candidates, and they do.
The Federal Election Commission explains the way this works.
An analysis of FEC filings by The Alaska Story identified $381,820 in contributions to Peltola-related campaign committees from corporate-sponsored PACs between 2022 and 2024.
Those contributors included PACs associated with Comcast and NBCUniversal, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Phillips 66, SpaceX, Alaska Airlines, Matson, FedEx, AT&T, Verizon, Halliburton, Humana, Northrop Grumman, Carnival Corp., Home Depot and numerous other companies.
The list also includes PACs associated with Alaska Native corporations, including Chugach Alaska Corp., Chenega Corp., NANA Regional Corp. and Arctic Slope Regional Corp.
The same contradiction appears in Peltola’s attacks on billionaire political spending.
Peltola has repeatedly declared that billionaires should not be able to buy elections and has promised to “get big money out of politics.” Yet a second review of FEC records by The Alaska Story identified $421,502.47 in contributions from people classified by researchers as billionaires, billionaire heirs, spouses, siblings, or widows.
The money was distributed across several election cycles and several Peltola-aligned committees, including Mary Peltola for Alaska, Alaskans for Mary, and the Fish Family Freedom Fund. Some contributions went through joint fundraising committees rather than directly to her principal campaign committee.
The donor list includes Eric Schmidt, Melinda French Gates, Reid Hoffman, James and Kathryn Murdoch, Lukas Walton, Lynda Resnick, George Kaiser, Brian Armstrong, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Michael Novogratz, and members or heirs of several other mega-wealthy families.
Peltola is also working to distance herself publicly from the national Democratic establishment and the Lower 48 political network helping finance her campaign.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris sent a fundraising appeal on Peltola’s behalf in August. Peltola responded by saying she was not seeking Harris’ endorsement or the endorsement of anyone from the Lower 48.
The New York Times reported that Peltola’s rejection of Harris’ help was intended to protect her image as an independent-minded Alaskan unaffiliated with national Democrats or Lower 48 politics.
Behind the scenes, however, Peltola has been actively raising money from many of the same Lower 48 political circles she publicly keeps at arm’s length.
FEC geographic summaries show California and New York among the leading sources of individual contributions to her campaign. Her California fundraising schedule this summer further illustrates the campaign’s reliance on national Democratic donors.
On Aug. 26, Peltola was the featured candidate at a Southern California fundraiser hosted at the home of Susan Hoffman Hyman, a longtime political fundraiser and activist. Hyman most recently served as co-chair of the national finance committee for Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow.
The event was organized through Electing Women Southern California, part of a national network that raises money to elect Democratic women.
Two days earlier, Peltola had participated in the Alaska Oil and Gas Association’s annual conference in Anchorage, where she emphasized her independence and criticized Sullivan’s ties to national Republicans. She then headed south to seek campaign money from California’s Democratic donor network.
It was not her first California fundraising trip of the campaign.
On June 12, the Fish Family Freedom Fund held a fundraiser for Peltola at the Los Angeles home of Cynthia Telles, who was President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Costa Rica.
Other listed sponsors included former Comcast executive Joe Waz; Wendy Greuel, who served in the Clinton administration and later as Los Angeles city controller; attorney Alicia Miñana of Human Rights Watch; and Cathy Unger, a former chair and current board member of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.
Two days later, Peltola was the beneficiary of another fundraiser organized through Electing Women Bay Area in San Francisco.
Electing Women Bay Area openly describes itself as a political giving group supporting Democratic women running for the Senate, governor, vice president and president. Its members commit thousands of dollars annually, including direct contributions to selected candidates. The organization says its Bay Area network has raised more than $10 million for women candidates and that the national alliance has raised more than $35 million since 2016.
Peltola is building her campaign around the claim that she is fighting the national political and financial establishment while benefiting from its fundraising machinery.
Her term-limit proposal presents another awkward contrast.
“If you can’t get it done in 12 years, go home,” Peltola wrote while promoting a proposed 12-year limit for members of Congress. But in the past, she professed that she supported Congressman Don Young, who served for 49 years.
Peltola has already spent approximately 14 years in elected office. She served five terms in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1999 through 2009, later served on the Bethel City Council and represented Alaska in Congress from September 2022 until January 2025.
During her tenure in Congress, no bill for which Peltola was the principal sponsor became law. One Peltola-sponsored measure establishing an Office of Food Security in the Department of Veterans Affairs passed the House in 2022 but never became law.
Attendance records have also drawn new scrutiny. Peltola missed 794 of 4,265 recorded votes in the Alaska House, or 18.6%, and 22 of 60 Bethel City Council meetings, or 36.7%, according to records cited by Fox News.
Then there is Jeffrey Epstein, long dead but not forgotten.
Peltola accused incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of being “bought by the Epstein class.”
Yet more than $140,000 in contributions to Peltola-related committees have come from donors publicly linked to the disgraced financier.
Peltola opened the door to the scrutiny by invoking Epstein as a political weapon against her opponent while accepting campaign money from people who traveled in Epstein’s social and business circles.
