Who is Mary Peltola? The first Alaska Native elected to Congress : NPR

Mary Peltola has been fishing on the Kuskokwim since she was a child.

Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media

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Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media

Mary Peltola has been fishing on the Kuskokwim since she was a child.

Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media

BETHEL, Alaska — Democrat Mary Peltola could not wait to get out on the Kuskokwim, the river she grew up on, south of the Yukon and upriver from the Bering Sea.

She’s pulled gillnets full of salmon from this river every summer since she was a child. Subsistence fishing and hunting is a way of life here, even for people with office jobs.

This summer, though, Peltola had been away, campaigning for Alaska’s sole seat in the U.S. House. She finally flew home to Bethel in late August and was itching to get on the water.

But a storm was moving through. That was a problem because the main goal of this trip was to capture footage of her on the river, for campaign ads.

“It’s good fishing weather, but it’s not great filming weather,” she said. “I think there’s some concern that equipment isn’t damaged,” she said.

So Peltola, wearing a gray blazer and more makeup than she’s used to, sat back down under the bright lights set up in her living room and took direction from her media consultant and cameraman.

“I’m Mary Peltola and here’s why I’m running for Don Young’s seat in Congress,” she said, over and over, striving for just the right level of energy.

With a TV crew and media consultant Martha McKenna of Baltimore, Peltola filmed a TV spot in her Bethel home.

Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media

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Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media

With a TV crew and media consultant Martha McKenna of Baltimore, Peltola filmed a TV spot in her Bethel home.

Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media

She didn’t know it then, but she had already won her long-shot campaign to replace the late Congressman Young.

After a 15-day waiting period for mailed ballots to arrive in the special election, Peltola learned on Aug. 31 she’d beaten the most famous Alaskan in history, former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, in one of the reddest states in…