Mary Peltola Proclaims Her Innocence, but Some Alaska Voters Aren't Buying It

Alaska Senate hopeful Mary Peltola's woes just keep growing more... woeful. Alaska's Senate race may well decide the balance of power in the 12th Congress, and our lunatic ranked choice voting (RCV) system may well have opened a door to shenanigans — shenanigans like recruiting another Dan Sullivan to run against the incumbent Dan Sullivan. Now, things are getting interesting indeed; on Friday, Mrs. Peltola spoke briefly with a local outlet, Alaska's News Source KTUU, and proclaimed her innocence in this matter.

When asked if it was possible that anyone in her campaign was potentially part of the conspiracy to plant Petersburg candidate Dan J. Sullivan on the Alaska ballot, she said she “honestly [has] no idea.”

“This is offensive to me on a number of different levels. First of all, this is Alaska; we’re not in the business of tricking each other up here,” she said.

“Second thing is, I know I can win this race. I’ve known since day one, I’ve been ahead of Dan Sullivan in the polls since before I even got in this race.”

The New York Times article named former campaign manager Elisa Rios, who alleged that Peltola was “definitely aware” of the project to recruit candidates named Dan Sullivan to enter the race in order to create voter confusion, but not directly involved.

When asked about her reaction to seeing Rios named in the article, Peltola had a biting retort.

“Clearly, folks are gone, they’re gone for a good reason,” she said. “If I could fire them again, I’d be happy to fire them again.”

This all has a very familiar ring to it.

Several voters who spoke to Fox News Digital on Friday outside an early voting location in Anchorage, Alaska, said they believed the reports that Mary Peltola's senate campaign recruited Dan J. Sullivan Jr. to run as a spoiler against the incumbent Republican with an almost identical name.

Robby, who works as a sculptor, said Peltola "betrayed the trust of Alaska voters."

"While I believe it's not against the law, I believe it was underhanded and I consider it cheating by the Mary Peltola campaign," he said outside the Midtown Mall after casting his ballot. "It's unconventional to find a person with the same first and last name to run agains the candidate that you're running against. I don't think it's done very often, probably almost never."

There's more:

Beth and Marge, two additional Alaska voters who spoke to Fox News Digital outside the same Anchorage early voting site, said they also felt that the Peltola campaign was engaging in dirty politics.

Marge, an 80-year-old former nurse, suggested that Peltola should take a lie detector test to see if she is telling the truth about denying any involvement in recruiting the other Dan Sullivan.

Beth, who is also retired after having worked in the medical field, said she never cared for Peltola even before this scandal.

People I've talked to here in the Mat-Su are expressing similar sentiments; also on Friday, I had the occasion to wait in line at the post office for a few minutes, and our community being as small as it is, and with enough people knowing what I do for a living, I hear a lot of what people around here think of the issues of the day — and this one is provoking a lot of discussion, in the post office, in the hardware store, and in the gas station. The great majority of the talk is that, no matter her proclamations of innocence, that Mary Peltola had to know what was going on — and even if she didn't, her name is still on the blame line.

The question remains this: Will all this affect the election? When the scandal broke earlier in the week, thanks to a New York Times (!) investigation, around ten percent of registered voters in Alaska had already cast their ballots. And with the travesty that is RCV in place, even after the truth came out and even with the second Dan Sullivan seeming to have fled the scene, things may still go Mary Peltola's way, even if plenty of Alaska voters aren't happy with how this is playing out. 

The question then becomes: What now?

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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