Just over a year after Democrat Mary Peltola was sworn in as the first Alaska Native to be elected to Congress, the man who stood alongside her during that ceremony, her husband, died in a plane crash. Eugene "Buzzy" Peltola Jr. was a respected figure in Alaska long before his wife's rise to national prominence, leading to her run for the Senate in the 2026 midterms, having worked as a wildlife manager, a tribal leader, a pilot and a public servant. When allegations of outbursts toward her congressional staffers emerged in The New York Times earlier this week, Peltola's campaign said she had struggled in her grief for her husband, as well as her mother, who both died within months of each other.
"Mary suddenly and tragically lost both her mother and her husband in the span of a few months in 2023," Harry Child, Peltola's campaign spokesperson, told Newsweek on Thursday. "At the time of their passing, Mary was parenting kids through their own grief, serving full time in the U.S. House of Representatives thousands of miles from home, and running a competitive reelection campaign—all while shouldering the enormous burden of grief." Newsweek reached out to Peltola's campaign for further comment Friday.
Peltola announced her U.S. Senate campaign off the back of her brief time as Alaska's only U.S. representative from 2022 through 2025. She is running against current Republican Senator Dan Sullivan.
Her campaign website leans heavily on her deep Alaskan roots, and she acknowledges that "life is difficult here" when talking about her state, explaining that "we know we have to take care of each other." Issues she outlines as facing her state include the depletion of fish stocks and the rocketing cost of living faced by many Americans. Peltola is seeking to flip one of her state's Senate seats blue for the first time since 2008, making it a key race for the November midterms as the Democrats seek to take back control of Congress. Earlier this week, her campaign was hit with allegations she had used slurs toward her staff and about a constituent.
The Times also said staffers had alleged she had shoved an aide. Her campaign team dismissed the allegations, while saying she had at times struggled in her grief over the loss of her husband and mother. Buzzy Peltola was born in February 1966 in Bethel, Alaska.
He was an Alaska Native and member of the Orutsararmiut Native Council based in the city. In the 1980s, he started working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), helping to lead subsistence management on federal lands in the state.
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