Alaska’s former U.S. Congresswoman Mary Peltola has a long history of missing key votes and skipping official proceedings while in elected office.
Now in the midst of a bid to unseat Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, Peltola’s absenteeism is making national news.
According to a new report from Fox News, the longtime liberal Democrat missed nearly one in five votes in the Alaska House of Representatives and over a third of the Bethel City Council meetings during her tenures in office.
In total, Peltola skipped 794 of 4,265 Alaska House votes over the ten years spanning 1999 to 2009. She then missed 22 of 60 Bethel City Council meetings from 2011 to 2013.
After easily advancing out of the Aug. 18 primary, Peltola is set to square off against Sullivan in the November ranked-choice voting general election.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
Her lack of engagement on the local and state level, however, is becoming an issue.
“Mary Peltola just can’t be bothered to show up for work, missing hundreds of votes and years’ worth of sessions as a state legislator and municipal official, raising serious questions about her commitment to public service,” said Republican National Committee spokesperson Nick Poche in an Aug. 24 statement. “In total, the missing time equates to nearly three years.”
As Fox points out, Peltola’s habit of missing votes continued during her 2022-2024 term in the U.S. Congress, where she skipped 235 of 1,370 roll-call votes – 17.2%, according to GovTrack data.
Additionally, her critics have noted that Peltola failed to sponsor any successful bills or resolutions during her time in D.C. – not a single bill.
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This article is a lesson in how to turn numbers into propaganda.
First, it claims Peltola missed “key votes” without identifying one supposedly key vote. It then calls every recorded non-vote “skipping,” even though Alaska’s legislative records distinguish formally excused absences from unexcused ones.
Fox News—the source Alaska Watchman cites—reported that Peltola gave birth to three children while serving in the Alaska Legislature and took maternity leave. Her campaign says that after excused absences are removed, she missed about 6% of state votes. Alaska Watchman simply omitted that part of the Fox report.
The RNC’s claim that her absences equal “nearly three years” is manufactured nonsense. A missed vote is not a missed workday. Legislatures regularly conduct several roll-call votes in one day, sometimes within minutes. You cannot convert 794 votes into 794 days, much less three years.
Her 17.2% congressional absence rate was high and voters are entitled to consider it. But a roll-call total is not a complete measure of whether a representative worked for Alaska. It also includes time spent at fish camp practicing her family’s subsistence tradition and time mourning her husband after his fatal plane crash.
The claim that she sponsored “not a single successful bill” is also deceptive. No Peltola-sponsored bill completed the entire House-Senate process and became law under her name. But her Food Security for All Veterans Act passed the House 376–49, and her Alaska Native Settlement Trust Eligibility Act advanced unanimously through committee. Those are successful legislative actions, even though the Senate did not finish them.
She also fought her own party to secure the Willow oil project, helped obtain $125 million for an Alaska-homeported icebreaker, supported hundreds of millions in fisheries-disaster relief and introduced serious bycatch and bottom-trawling legislation.
Criticize the attendance record honestly. But counting maternity leave as “skipping,” turning votes into imaginary years and pretending legislation that passed the House never existed is not journalism. It is an RNC press release with an Alaska byline.
Blah, blah, blah…., ad infinitum
What are her accomplishments during those years in public office? What did she accomplish in her two years in congress?
What did Dan do in his first two years?
In Alaska and probably other states the judges make the laws, not the legislatures or governor. The judges wield the power which means they are legislating from the bench which is not Constitutional. Another judge ruled that rank choice voting was fine even though the Constitution states one man, one vote. Ranked choice creates one man three votes and the strongest voter loses. The Alaska Supreme Court has judges that are impeachable yet nothing is or can be done about it. Soros and Zuckerburg interfered with the vote to review and improve the Alaska Constitution. Lt. Governoe Kevin Meyer accepted money to give Alaska voter rolls through ERIC/CEIR and then used them for propaganda to scare the voters out of opening the Alaska Constitution for scrutiny concerning 4 specific concerns. One of which was to change the portion of the state law that said that the judges will be appointed from a list of their colleagues. Their colleagues are leftists and the choices of judges are hand picked by other leftists only. The judges in Alaska are corrupt and decided that the cheater “Decoy Dan” can run even though it is clear that the intent is to give advantage to Peltola. In addition, there are 5 or more blue states that are donating their money to Peltola’s campaign in order to flip Alaska to blue. Those blue states are Massachusetts, Maryland, California, Washington state, and Wisconsin. Wisconsin has a superpac in Hudson that individual donors can use to hide who the actual donors are. Where are the honest judges who will do their jobs correctly according to the original intent of the US Constitution and the Alaska Constitution? Do not be confused, Senator Daniel S. Sullivan, incumbent is Alaska’s good candidate to help the MAGA movement.
Lots of lawyers and judges are Jewish does that expalin our position with Isreal? Especially the fact that we subsidize their free higher education, free health care, and free abortions!
Thanks Tim for setting the record straighter! However her public record speaks for itself. Missing in action!
Peltoa is a joke. I giggle every time I hear the ad about her living in the “big city of Bethel”. Since when did Bethel become a big city? Also, in her ad…she whines about high fuel and grocery prices in the villages. Well, what does she expect us to do…fly everything there for free? The costs of shipping to the villages is HIGH. Instead of asking the rest of us to subsidize it, how about she works on the native corporations to get up off their fat wallets to take care of that situation?
KKirk, you hit the nail on it’s head. Mary wants us all to subsidies village/remote living, I think she learned that from Lisa. She should be running under the Democratic Socialist of America banner.
A vote for Mary is a wasted vote. Vote for the real Dan S Sullivan.
People just need to be smart and not vote her back into office. She did absolutely nothing beneficial for this state during the short tenure in office.
Dan did relatively nothing in his first two years
What Dan did and what Mary did are two different things…..so Mary will follow her NO SHOW direction in the future. Does that make it right to not represent the people of Ak because of her priorities? Priorities in office are important for all, not just villages and native directions. Mary is a nice person, but not a good representative for all. And remember “for all” is just that FOR ALL. Just because Dan did nothing doesn’t mean it is equally justifiable for Mary to continue the same trait. Nothing is nothing.
Just like Lisa Murkowski, they have sold the people on the idea that they work for the Alaskan people, but once voted in, they only reveal they are just another congress critter getting rich of your stupidity.
you mean like Dan has?