Mary Peltola’s attendance record followed her through three public offices and under six different names, with legislative records reviewed on Sept. 1, 2026 showing missed votes and meetings in the Alaska House of Representatives, the Bethel City Council and Congress. The pattern adds up to a long trail of absences that did not stop when she moved from local office to Washington.
That is why her name is being searched now. Peltola is again seeking another federal office, and the numbers now in circulation are stark: 794 missed votes out of 4,265 in the Alaska House from 1999 through 2009, 22 missed meetings out of 60 on the Bethel City Council from 2011 through 2013, and 235 missed roll-call votes out of 1,370 in Congress from mid-2022 through 2024. In the House, that amounted to 18.6% of the votes she was elected to cast.
The record is not a single bad stretch. It runs across her time as Mary Sattler, Mary Kapsner, Mary Sattler Kapsner, Mary Nelson, Mary Sattler-Nelson and Mary Peltola. During the 23rd Alaska Legislature in 2003 and 2004, she missed 334 of 1,019 votes, nearly one-third of the recorded decisions in that session. On the Bethel City Council, she missed 11 of 32 meetings in 2012 and 9 of 22 in 2013, for an absence rate of 36.7% over the full 2011 through 2013 period.
The campaign has offered explanations for some of that record, but not all of it. It said the Alaska House figures were unfair because three of her children were born while she was serving and she took maternity leave. It also said some Bethel City Council absences came during summers when she was fishing and meetings conflicted with that work. Those explanations do not reach the later congressional tally, where her 17.2% missed-vote rate was far above the roughly 2.2% median for House members serving at the end of 2024.
That gap matters because Alaska has only one member of the U.S. House. When Peltola missed votes, the state had no backup voice in those roll calls. Her congressional tenure also ended without any bill or resolution she primarily sponsored becoming law, even as Congressman Nick Begich replaced her and set a historic record in Congress by passing more bills than any freshman in history. The numbers now leave a simple question for voters weighing her next campaign: whether a record of showing up this often, and missing this much, can be separated from the office she wants next.
