While Mary Peltola was not campaigning for elected office, she spent nearly $200,000 out of her House Committee on catering, hotels, and transportation outside of Alaska, according to a new report from NOTUS. Peltola spent on just about everything except campaign-related expenditures.
“After getting fired by Alaskans in 2024, cash-strapped Mary Peltola used her House Committee as a personal slush fund, spending more than double the average salary in Alaska on D.C. restaurants, hotels, and Lower 48 speaking tours. Peltola spent every dime of her slush fund and is only running for Senate to keep the gravy train rolling,” said NRSC Regional Press Secretary Nick Puglia.
Read more from NOTUS here or below:
Mary Peltola’s House Campaign Spent on Airfare, Hotels and Meals as She Eyed a Senate Run
Dave Levinthal
March 26, 2026
NOTUSAfter Mary Peltola lost her congressional reelection bid in November 2024, she quickly scored a job with the law and lobbying firm Holland & Hart as its senior director of Alaska government affairs.
She also seemed to relish stepping off the campaign trail, despite having filed perfunctory 2026 House campaign paperwork with the Federal Election Commission in late 2024.
“Since leaving Congress, I’ve been able to catch up with family, friends, and loved ones who I haven’t seen in a while. I’d be lying if I said I’m not enjoying life right now,” Peltola wrote in a text message to supporters this past August.Although the former House representative made no secret about her desire to eventually return to elected office — “I’m considering how I can best serve Alaskans,” she wrote in the same text message — Peltola offered little indication about what exactly those public service aspirations might entail.
Peltola proved them correct when she abandoned her House committee, formed a new U.S. Senate campaign committee, Alaskans for Mary, and announced in January that she’d challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan for his seat.
But in the year leading to Peltola’s Senate announcement, her House campaign committee, Mary Peltola for Alaska, kept spending money on expenses that appear to have little connection to a House campaign effort, according to a NOTUS analysis of FEC campaign filings.
From January 2025 to its termination this month, Peltola’s House campaign committee spent nearly $200,000, including $50,000 on airline tickets and lodging, often outside of Alaska, such as when Peltola appeared at political or public policy events in Idaho, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
The committee also spent $8,000-plus on catering and meals and more than $1,300 on ground transportation, FEC records indicate.
Also notable is what Peltola’s House committee wasn’t spending money on.
In the final three months of 2025, for example, the committee reported having no staffers on its payroll. Nor did the committee report any advertising or legal expenditures. It spent just $2,667 on fundraising efforts during this time — about the same amount it reported paying for storage fees.
Peltola’s campaign declined to answer specific questions from NOTUS about her House committee campaign spending.
In a statement to NOTUS, Peltola’s campaign said that “Mary’s top priority will always be putting Alaska first, and she’s running for Senate because Dan Sullivan has sold out the state to his special interest backers while Alaskans have been forced to pay the price.”
Asked about Peltola’s House committee spending, a Sullivan campaign spokesperson said the expenditures don’t “seem normal.”
“It very much seems like she treated her House campaign as a personal slush fund,” said Nate Adams, a spokesperson for Sullivan’s Senate reelection campaign. “Why was this House campaign committee being used at all if she never had intentions to run for the House?”
Sullivan’s campaign left open whether they’d raise the question with federal campaign regulators.
The standard venue for federal campaign finance complaints is the FEC, which enforces and regulates the nation’s campaign finance laws.
But since May 2025, the FEC has lacked the minimum number of commissioners — four — to conduct high-level business, including formalizing investigations or offering political committees official advice on how best to comply with election laws and rules.
After months of delay, President Donald Trump in February nominated two Republican attorneys to fill vacant seats, although they haven’t yet received a Senate confirmation hearing or vote. The agency remains mostly idled, with an enforcement backlog nearing 200 cases as of earlier this month.
FEC spokesman Myles Martin declined to comment on the specifics of Peltola’s House committee but noted that general FEC regulations and guidance allow campaign funds to be used for purposes in connection with a campaign to influence the federal election of the candidate — “but conversion of campaign funds to personal use by any person is prohibited.”
The FEC defines “personal use” as the “use of funds in a campaign account of a present or former candidate to fulfill a commitment, obligation or expense of any person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign or duties as a federal officeholder,” Martin said.
“Several types of activities may be evaluated by the commission on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the expense would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign or duties as a federal officeholder, including legal expenses and travel expenses,” Martin said.
Former Rep. Brian Baird, a Democrat from Washington who served in Congress from 1999 to 2011, said there’s a “fair bit of discretion granted in terms of use of residual funds” from an old campaign committee and that the “benefit of the doubt should go to the candidate unless there’s something totally egregious,” such as a former candidate spending campaign cash on a personal vacation home.
But without a fully functional FEC, it’s difficult for the federal government to regulate federal campaign money matters big or small, he said.
“When there’s no FEC, there are no consequences,” said Baird, who advises the nonpartisan government and campaign watchdog group Issue One.
Most recent polls show Sullivan and Peltola locked in a statistical dead heat, and the Cook Political Report currently rates the race as “leans Republican,” slightly favoring Sullivan.
Alaska’s Senate primary is scheduled for August 18, with a Green Party candidate, Richard Grayson, and another Republican candidate, Dustin Darden, also declared. The ranked-choice voting general election is on November 3.
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