Mary Peltola campaign: Mary Peltola on Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word

Leading off for our discussion tonight is former Congresswoman Mary Peltola of Alaska. She is the Democratic candidate for United States Senate in Alaska. Thank you very much for joining us tonight on what I believe is your first national television interview since you won the nomination. Uh, you, you saw this as a possible win for Democrats from the start. Uh, are you now getting Democratic Party support now that you've shown this, this Alaska can be a win?

I'm getting broad-based support across Alaska. Lawrence, thank you so much for having me this evening. I'm very encouraged by this race in 2026. We have over 15,000 Alaskans signed up to volunteer for us this cycle. In '24, we just had 1,000 Alaskans signed up.

And I meet people every day who say, I've never participated in a campaign before. I now don't a recurring donor every month. I met a woman in Palmer the other week who said she'd never participated in a campaign except to vote. And she was, had walked her neighborhoods for me 12 times. So I'm very encouraged by the turnout this year.

So you have a price of gas. You're always in Alaska, you're watching the national news talking about the average price for gas in the 50 states. Knowing that in Alaska it's about a dollar more than that average price. You're over $5 now. Do voters understand how that price got to where it is?

Voters in Alaska are very sophisticated and deeply understand the relationship that prices have with the Strait of Hormuz. And, you know, I really appreciated that you all put the price, the average price in Anchorage is just slightly over $5, and that's our biggest city. But we have remote, remote communities like Shungnak outside of Kotzebue. They're going to be paying $26.82 a gallon throughout the entire winter until their spring barge comes. Again, $26.82 a gallon for gasoline.

But even in larger communities, hubs like Dillingham out in Bristol Bay, they'll be paying $9 a gallon for gas. Okay, so you know, you, you're changing my calculations about how we get to an average price of gas in America. I have never before this moment heard of $26 gas, but I understand it. I understand how remote that location is and what the delivery system must be to get it there. Hawaii, as we know, has very high gas prices, but nothing like that.

So, uh, so what are the other things about about life in Alaska that have become more difficult during these last 2 years? Well, like you say, Alaska really is at the end of the supply chain, the logistics supply chain, and we are often paying much more than Hawaii is for their commodities. As another good example, and this is a price from 2 years ago, so I'll be interested to see how the price has gone up, but in Kaktovik, a community outside of Utqiagvik in the North Slope, a 60 Tablet container of Advil was $68. So every single thing that we buy is impacted by the price of fuel. 82% Of our communities you can only get to by air.

If we were our own country, we would be the 18th largest country in the world. We are huge. At low tide, you could fit 3 Texases within Alaska's parameters. We have more coastline than even the lower 48. But it's very expensive to travel here, and it— we We really are tied to the price of petroleum, and we're being priced out of petroleum at this point.

This is definitely the best geography lesson I have gotten on this show. 3 Texases at low tide fit into the map of Alaska. So, what has— you know, you've got campaign ads that are hitting Dan Sullivan for not doing what Alaska needs during this time. He has not opposed Donald Trump's war. Opportunities in the United States Senate to vote against it, he has voted to support it every single time.

Uh, same thing with, uh, the Trump tariffs and the Trump tariffs in relation to Canada, uh, which are a big problem, uh, for neighboring Alaska. Uh, what are some of the other things, uh, that you see as Dan Sullivan's failings in the United States Senate? Well, like you say, Lawrence, Dan Sullivan has voted more than 10 times to support this war in Iran. Dan Sullivan has voted more than 10 times to jack up the prices for all Alaskans, and he has the audacity to refer to this situation as an externality, a campaign externality. When he was asked about energy prices, he said, "Well, I don't think that they're good anywhere, and every campaign has externalities." We don't really even know what that means in Alaska.

This is an everyday issue for us. While Dan Sullivan has tripled his own personal wealth in the last 12 years doing prolific amounts of stock trades, the rest of us in Alaska have been going backwards financially. We are living very hand-to-mouth. And it's even more so now. You know, last winter was a really cold winter, long sustained weeks of below-zero temperatures throughout Alaska, a lot of snow.

In May, I went to some of the villages, I would talk to folks who would say, this winter, I'm so— I've been so worried about my kids and my grandkids. Every day they have to choose between heat and food. And I hear this over and over in Alaska. We're very concerned about the upcoming winter and how people are going to afford to heat their homes and pay for groceries and pay for healthcare. We pay the highest price for healthcare in Alaska across the United States, which means we pay the highest price in the world for healthcare.

Mary Peltola, Democratic candidate for Senate in Alaska, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you so much for teaching me so much tonight about Alaska. Please come back and join us whenever you can. Please go to marypeltola.com to contribute to my campaign. Thanks so much, Lawrence.

Thank you. And coming up—.