A news report about Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s anger toward staff members has Democrats asking themselves: Should we tolerate that?
Democrats piled on against anyone who thinks her behavior crossed a line, following a New York Times report detailing allegations from Peltola’s former staffers of angry outbursts in her time as a member of the House and during her current Senate campaign.
Instead, just six weeks from Election Day, many Democrats are arguing that Peltola’s staffers were too sensitive.
“The timing of this story and the weakness of the claims just kind of underscores the fact that these people don’t care about winning when the stakes are really high!” a veteran Democratic operative told The Washington Sun. “We’re in the ‘just win baby’ window of campaigning.
Trending
Like if she had pulled a gun on someone, that would hopefully merit a different response. But this is just like … get over yourself.”
The story has consumed the Democratic Party in a crucial stretch of campaign season. Peltola is running against Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in one of the country’s most competitive races, which is expected to play a key role in deciding the Senate majority.
Several veterans of Democratic campaigns pointed out online that the staffers who spoke to The New York Times are emblematic of a broader culture problem with their party. They argue that Democratic staffers are too sensitive and demand working conditions not suited for the tense, fast-paced culture of a high-stakes campaign.
“Democrats right now are trying to shake this image of being like the soft, collegial academics,” said Yemisi Egbewole, a senior fellow at Third Way and former Biden administration staffer. “It’s all this conversation about the working class, searching for grittier, tougher candidates, and meanwhile, the staffer class remains just the very soft academics that we make fun of here.”
The Times story describes an instance in 2024 in which Peltola allegedly shoved a staff member because she couldn’t find a memo for a meeting. The sources also described her use of the slur “faggot” to the outlet, which also reported a screenshot of a text Peltola sent referring to someone as a “retard.” In another text described by the outlet, she said of someone else: “I hope she dies of a botched abortion.”
The pattern of behavior also reportedly veered into the odd: Some of the staffers said she asked them to feed her daughter’s pet chameleon. More recently, she reportedly grew frustrated that the campaign did not have enough large campaign signs. “OUR SIGN GAME IS FUCKED” she said in texts seen by the outlet.
The campaign denied to the Times that Peltola’s actions amounted to a pattern of abusive behavior and denied her use of the homophobic slur. Her team also described the incident of physical contact with the staffer as a bump, rather than a shove, while the then-lawmaker was distracted. The campaign acknowledged to the newspaper that Peltola sometimes struggled to manage her grief after her mother and husband died in the span of a few months in 2023.
Peltola’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Sun.
Democrats also said there is a double standard, for both women and Democrats.
“I simply will not be lectured to about decorum from the folks supporting Ken Paxton, Bo French, Max Miller, Mike Collins, and Brandon Herrera,” Lauren French, a spokesperson for Senate Majority PAC, said on X.
Female politicians are often subject to harsher scrutiny, some Democrats argued.
“I have definitely heard stories of male members of both houses being total nightmares but apparently no reporter has,” Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and a veteran of presidential campaigns, wrote on X. “Because somehow we get these stories about women leaders exclusively.”
Other Democrats acknowledged that Peltola’s behavior was inappropriate, even if they believed the former staffers’ handling of it was, too.
“Two things can be true: (1) It’s not great nor effective when bosses (in any context) yell at or are otherwise shitty to their employees. AND: (2) Going to the NYT to complain about that behavior is almost never the correct response & will do more harm than good,” Amanda Litman, president of Run for Something, a progressive organization that recruits young candidates, wrote on X.
The main lesson for the party, many Democrats argued, is that in a race this competitive, campaign staff should do whatever it takes to get the candidate into office. This is not the first time Democrats have vented this type of frustration about griping — a similar conversation took hold when the Democratic National Committee ordered its staff to return to in-person work.
“There’s something deeply broken in the culture of Democratic Party staffing that people would think it is unreasonable to be asked to feed your boss’s pet while she does a job that involves commuting back and forth to Alaska,” wrote Matthew Yglesias, a Democratic commentator.
Author
Contributor
