Ms. Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska, has complicated politics: She is pro-gun, pro-oil and pro-gas — but also pro-environment and especially pro-fish.
Page A3From§Eachthe milkman edition — 28 September 2026
Peltola campaign blames staff slurs on grief, then blames the grief story on The New York Times
As it ran on the front
The statement came first, dated September 24. Mary Peltola's Senate campaign, responding to a New York Times report on how she treated staff, said she was "shouldering the enormous burden of grief." The word carries real weight. It is also doing a specific job in that sentence — covering ground the campaign did not want covered directly.
The ground the Times had already covered directly. Former aides told the paper Peltola berated staff, used slurs, and shoved an employee, in an account of a congressional office and a campaign the Times described as marked by chaos and angry outbursts. Those are the specifics "shouldering the enormous burden of grief" was answering. Grief explains a temper. It does not, on its own, explain a slur, and the campaign's statement did not try to separate the two — it folded the specific allegations into the general sorrow and left them there.…
…(cont) The Hill covered the campaign's response to that same Times report the same day, and the headline told the direction of it: the campaign "rips" the report. Behind that word are the aides themselves, several speaking anonymously, describing profane outbursts and displays of anger running through both the campaign and the prior congressional office — tensions The Hill said continued.
Three days later, the Times ran the kind of piece campaigns usually welcome. "She's One of Us" called her rise complicated and, in one sentence, listed what makes it so: pro-gun, pro-oil, pro-gas, pro-environment, and pro-fish, five positions held by the same person. That range is the pitch of the whole campaign — a candidate too specific to sort into either party's usual box.
Count what the campaign has managed to hold at once. Five positions on energy and fish, no contradiction required. Two positions on its own office in the span of one week — grief, then grievance — and only the first one touched what the aides said happened.
“They call it grief, fine, everybody grieves — but the Times didn't report a funeral, it reported the slurs and the shove, with names attached to the account. Soon as the paper got specific, the campaign stopped explaining the behavior and started going after the byline. That's the move when you can't win the argument on the facts: you make the argument about who wrote them down.”
“It's grief — anybody who's lost two people in one year is going to have a rough stretch at the office, that's not a pattern, that's being human. And you don't just roll over when a paper runs anonymous sourcing, you push back, that's standard practice — except the Times didn't just quote anonymous aides, it printed the slurs and the shove specifically, so, okay, that talking point doesn't really — never mind.”
The receipts
· Mary Peltola’s campaign defends against claims she mistreated staffers: ‘Shouldering the enormous burden of grief’ from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Mary Peltola’s Campaign in Alaska Senate Race Is Rocked by Tumult, With Angry Outbursts and Slurs from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Peltola campaign rips New York Times report on tumultuous operations from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.