Dem Senate hopeful rocked by explosive ex-aide claims as campaign cites ‘hardest period of her life’

Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola is confronting accusations from former staffers that she behaved abusively while in office, including using slurs against gay and disabled people, firing off profane texts, and, in one instance, physically pushing an employee. The New York Times broke the allegations Wednesday. Peltola's campaign pushed back on parts of the account, while acknowledging that some of the conduct in question coincided with a devastating stretch in her personal life, according to Fox News.

Her mother and her husband both died within months of one another in 2023, a spokesman for the campaign said, a period during which Peltola was also raising grieving children, serving in Congress far from Alaska, and fighting to keep her House seat. The spokesman said Peltola has spent nearly 30 years in public service and generally keeps warm relationships with her staff, arguing that isolated moments from that painful stretch are being distorted into a supposed pattern of mistreatment. He called that characterization false and unfair.

Not every incident described by the former aides traces back to that 2023 period, however; some of the alleged conduct is said to have taken place more recently. Peltola declined to engage with journalists on the matter, walking away without comment when asked about it following a town hall event Wednesday, according to Alaska News Source.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →