Mary Peltola announced the endorsement of the Calista Native Corporation earlier this month, an endorsement that came just after she reversed her stance on the proposed Donlin Mine, which would be developed on Calista-owned land, if the federal government will grant water and other permits.
Peltola worked for the Donlin Mine project as a “community manager” for six years. But when she ran for Congress in 2022, she campaigned against the mine’s development.
The president and chief executive officer at Calista Native Corporation is Andrew Guy.
Guy is also on the board of a pop-up group called the Alaska Jobs Coalition. The website for the new group was created by the Ship Creek Group, a leftist political campaign group in Anchorage that has worked on the campaign of Peltola and many other Democrats in Alaska. Its members include Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, also a supporter of Peltola. The funding for the group is not revealed.
The entire “Donlin reveal” appeared to be one big coordinated event, although Peltola’s flipping on the mine has upset some of her Native supporters, who thought she was about “Fish, Family and Freedom.”
The timeline of the events:
April 10: The website domain AlaskaJobsCoalition.org is reserved for one year by Ship Creek Group, which does work for Peltola’s campaign.
April 23: News hits that Peltola comes out in favor of the Donlin Mine.
April 23: Calista, whose president and CEO is Andrew Guy, endorses Peltola.
May 14: Alaska Jobs Coalition, endorses Peltola in an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News, and the next day it appears in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
“The Alaska Jobs Coalition is not affiliated with any candidate or electoral campaign,” the op-ed states.
Then the group says, “Rep. Mary Peltola has consistently put Alaska jobs first in her votes supporting domestic energy production. Mary’s work with the White House was instrumental in getting approval for ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil project on the North Slope at a time when the administration has fought oil and gas projects elsewhere in Alaska.” But it doesn’t say explicitly that this is an endorsement, because that would run afoul of campaign laws, since the group is not officially doing campaign activities.
May 14: Alaska Jobs Coalition website formally launches. As of May 19, it is not registered with the Federal Elections Commission as a super PAC.
Alaska Jobs Coalition members, along with Calista’s Andrew Guy and AFL-CIO’s Joelle Hall, include Joey Merrick, business manager for Laborers’ Local 341; Gary Dixon, secretary and treasurer of Alaska Teamsters; Doug Tansy, business manager of IBEW Local 1574; Heidi Drygas, executive director of ASEA AFSCME Local 52; Barbara ‘Wáahlaal Gidaag Blake, vice president for Arctic Conservation of Ocean Conservancy and Juneau Assembly member; and trial lawyer Matt Singer, who specializes in Alaska Native corporation law.
The sequence of events has some of the markings of a coordinated, quid-pro-quo deal made in order to advance the interests of Calista and Rep. Peltola’s reelection, now just three months away. Ballots for military members living overseas will be in the mail in about 45 days, thus the campaign season is now in full swing.
Meanwhile, Peltola’s personal financial disclosure report, due May 15, is not on file with the Clerk of the Congress. She has asked for an extension and her financial ties will not be revealed until Aug. 13, just one week before the end of the Aug. 20 primary. In her 2022 filing, she did not disclose that she is a Calista Shareholder and receives annual dividends from the corporation.
Donlin, the proposed mine located on land owned by the Kuskokwim Corporation (surface estate) and Calista Corporation (subsurface estate), is jointly owned by Barrick Gold US Inc. and NovaGold Resources Alaska, Inc. Calista shareholders, including Peltola, stand to make significant passive earnings from the mine.
