It wasn’t “Nice Mary” who showed up on Wednesday afternoon at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association candidate forum. It was “Mean Mary.”
It was also “Nervously reading all the answers to questions” Mary Peltola.
Rep. Mary Peltola’s big dig of the night at candidate Nick Begich came when it was her turn to ask a question of her lead opponent. Her question strongly implied that he has not paid his dues as lifelong government employee, as she has. And that everyone in the room was on her side in thinking that Begich had no right to run for Congress.
“I believe in public service. I think most Alaskans believe in public service. And I just think it’s odd that you have no record of serving the public, either on the municipal level or the state level and you feel like you can just go straight to the top.”
By implication, she was saying that all the oil workers in the room would also not have that right that she alone had earned.
Begich didn’t have the chance to respond in the debate format, but in fact he served on the board of the Alaska Policy Forum, was elected to the Matanuska Telephone Association, was co-chair of the “No on One” campaign to prevent the return to high oil taxes created by the ACES tax regime, and was finance chair of the Alaska Republican Party. In addition, he has invested his own money in start-up businesses in Alaska and across the world, and helped them grow actual jobs in the private sector.
But that’s not the kind of service she meant. Peltola meant the paid government jobs she has had all her life, either elected to the state legislature, or in the many government pass-through public commission-type jobs she has had. She has held gravy train jobs paid by taxpayers. In Peltola’s mind, only those who have taken government money for decades should run for government positions.
She also criticized Begich for jumping into the race in 2021 to challenge the late Congressman Don Young.
“A lot of us in this room are wondering whether this is more about your personal ambition than the best interest of Alaska. Why do you feel like you’re more qualified than all of us, especially Don, to represent Alaska?” she asked, reading her question from her prepared notes.
Notwithstanding that Young is now 18 months deceased, having died at the ripe age of 88 during the campaign in 2022, the question was set up to pit Begich against herself, the deceased congressman, but also Sarah Palin, who Peltola said was the greatest oil advocate the state had ever had.
It was Palin who signed the punishing ACES tax regime, which was then reversed by Senate Bill 21.
ACES was a devastating bill for Alaska because it made the state look like an unstable place to do business. The progressive and unstable nature of the tax made it hard for companies to know what their costs would be. No one in the oil world liked it.
The prepared notes Peltola read from tripped her up during the forum. The candidates had been given the questions in advance, and on every question, Peltola read her answers word for word from the page.
At one point, she read the wrong answer to the question that had been given.
“I need a turn,” she demanded from the moderator, Michelle Egan.
Then she began reading her answer, before stopping.
“Wait, am I even on the right question?” she asked.
“No,” Egan responded.
“Sorry, I don’t need a turn, ” Peltola said.
Although she wore a bolo to channel Don Young, this was not a Don Young performance. It was the performance of a 12-year-old child.
Overall, Peltola appeared wooden and stressed on stage in front of about 450 oil patch workers and legislators. Her entourage of campaign employees huddled around her afterwards. She had not won over the audience. Peltola did not flash her trademark smile except in her opening remarks, when she shouted “Willow!” as she took credit for convincing President Joe Biden to let the ConocoPhillips project go forward. That exclamation fell flat with the audience of professionals, who understand the seriousness of the investment climate they are in.
Begich checkmated her on her taking credit for Willow. He reminded the audience that Biden is on record saying he approved it only because Department of Justice lawyers told him he would lose in court, and in approving Willow, he would proceed to lock up the rest of the oil and gas fields in Alaska, something he did this summer as he locked up 28 million acres of areas in the Arctic and Beaufort Seas, and lands stretching nearly to the Bering Sea.
A question from the audience toward the end was to Peltola: Why did she miss so many important votes? She responded sarcastically that she had lost her husband and mother in one year and hopes that doesn’t happen again. This was an attempt to inoculate her from criticism, but earlier in the forum, Begich had pointed out that she had encouraged her Democrat colleagues to vote against the important “Alaska’s Right to Produce” energy bill for Alaska, when she only voted “present,” betraying her state once again.
Peltola had also ducked out of the House Chambers rather than vote on a bill to force the Biden Administration to restore safe levels into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a vote that came several months before her husband and mother passed away. And before their passing, she already had one of the worst attendance records in Congress.
She left Washington to return to Bethel to process fish earlier this summer for over a week, saying it was important that she help feed her family. In reality, she makes $170,000 a year as a member of Congress and, as her children are all adults, is not struggling to make ends meet. This is the best-paying government job she has ever had, in a long string of government jobs.
