Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola and her family suffered “minor injuries” in a car accident, her campaign said on Sunday.
According to Politico, the crash took place on Saturday night. As per her campaign, Peltola and her family were on their way to the Alaska Federation of Natives Annual Banquet when another driver hit their vehicle. The campaign said the injuries needed medical attention.
“Mary and her family sustained minor injuries but are in good spirits,” Peltola’s campaign manager, Cheryl Bruce, said in a statement.
Also read: Mary Peltola, the former Alaska congresswoman running for the US Senate
Campaign events pushed back
Bruce said Peltola is rescheduling events on the advice of doctors as she takes time to recover.
“Unfortunately, per the advice of medical professionals, Mary’s upcoming events in Fairbanks and Bethel will be rescheduled for later in the week as she takes time to recover,” Bruce said in the statement as per CBS News.
The crash has hit the start of Peltola’s “Alaska Always Tour.” It as an eight-community, seven-day campaign swing ahead of the midterms.
As per Politico, the events in Fairbanks and Bethel were planned for Sunday and Monday and will be rescheduled. The campaign said stops in Homer, Kenai, Seward, Juneau, Anchorage and Palmer will go on as planned.
“Mary is disappointed that the accident is delaying the start of her Alaska Always Tour, and she is eager to get back on the campaign trail to speak directly with Alaskans about her plan to take on the rigged system and lower costs for working families,” Bruce said.
Who is Mary Peltola?
Peltola is 53. She is trying to unseat Republican Senator Dan Sullivan and become the first Democrat elected to the Senate since 2008. This comes four years after she became the first Democrat to represent the state in the House in 50 years.
As per CBS News, she was the top vote-getter in the August top-four primary. That sets up the general election against Sullivan and two other candidates under Alaska’s ranked-choice system.
Peltola was born on August 31, 1973, in Anchorage, Alaska. She grew up in rural Alaska along the Kuskokwim River and is Yup’ik, an Alaskan indigenous group. Her mother, Elizabeth Williams, was from the Yup’ik village of Kwethluk. Her father, Ward Sattler, moved to Alaska from Nebraska and worked as a teacher, principal and bush pilot. As a child, she spent time fishing salmon with her father. This later shaped her interest in fisheries and rural Alaskan communities.
Between 1991 and 1998, she studied at the University of Northern Colorado, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Southeast and the University of Alaska Anchorage.
She has seven children. Four are her biological children and three are stepchildren, whom she raised with her late husband, Eugene “Buzzy” Peltola Jr. He was a former Alaska regional director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He died in a plane crash in September 2023.
