Mary Peltola—the self-proclaimed “fish” candidate—was caught using imagery in an ad of a factory trawler to attack…the trawling industry. Peltola’s ad shows “a trawl net destructively plowing the seafloor” in Turkey, not Alaska.
This comes amid a bombshell New York Times report about Peltola’s physical abuse of staff and disgusting comments including that she wished an Alaskan died from a botched abortion. Peltola also recently fired several long-time aides after she asked Kamala Harris for her endorsement.
Reminder: Peltola couldn’t get one bill signed into law in Congress and sponsored zero fishing bills during her term. Meanwhile, Senator Dan S. Sullivan is delivering for Alaska’s fishermen with his Bycatch Reduction Act headed to the Senate floor for a vote—an effort Peltola would empower her fellow Democrats to block.
“Mary Peltola doesn’t know a factory trawler from her right hand. Alaska’s fishermen can’t trust Peltola to put them first,” said NRSC Regional Press Secretary Nick Puglia.
Read more from the Anchorage Daily News here or below.
Peltola yanks campaign post that took aim at factory trawling and used footage of Alaska-based CDQ ship
Alex DeMarban
Anchorage Daily News
September 23, 2026
Mary Peltola’s U.S. Senate campaign has removed a social media post that used appropriated imagery, including of a factory trawler owned by an Alaska company, to attack the trawling industry and its wasteful bycatch of fish.
…
The post also contains imagery of a trawl net destructively plowing the seafloor, but from waters outside Turkey filmed in a 2025 David Attenborough documentary, not the purported location off Alaska coasts. The Alaska Landmine blog reported the connection over the weekend.The messaging raises questions about how Peltola, a Democrat who served over two years in the House until early 2025, would accomplish her goal of banning the large factory trawlers that are largely Seattle-based, but catch and process pollock in Alaska waters.
Some of the state’s six Community Development Quota nonprofit corporations, which by federal law receive a share of the valuable pollock catch to benefit 65 Alaska Native communities in Western Alaska, own stakes in those Outside factory trawlers.
The CDQ holdings also include the Northern Hawk, which is home-ported in Western Alaska and is the only factory trawler that’s fully owned by a CDQ group — in this case, the Coastal Villages Region Fund that serves Peltola’s home region along the Kuskokwim River.
…
Sullivan has… taken numerous steps to improve Alaska’s fisheries, including legislatively creating a task force to help address declines in Alaska salmon, successfully fighting to ban the importation of fish caught by Russian trawlers and pursuing recent legislation to reduce bycatch, though Peltola also pursued those issues and proposed similar legislation as Alaska’s lone U.S. representative.Sullivan has argued that if Peltola is elected and Democrats regain control of the Senate, she would empower Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Seattle who has strongly defended Seattle fishing interests, to become the next chair of the chamber’s powerful Commerce Committee.