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Alaska's new Democratic congresswoman is just two months into her first full term after winning a special and regular election for Alaska's lone seat in the U.S. House.

She's taking her own approach to representing the state after the nearly 50 year legacy of the late Don Young.

What our representative Mary Peltolas priorities in Washington this year.

And how will she accomplish them as a minority member in an increasingly divisive Congress?

We'll discuss that with Congresswoman Mary Peltola right now.

on Alaska Insight.

Good evening.

We're getting straight to our discussion tonight with Alaska's sole representative in the U.S. House, Congresswoman Mary Peltola.

Thanks for being with us.

I'm sure your schedule is really busy, so we really appreciate your time here tonight.

Thank you, Larry.

It seems like you've had a pretty good reception in Congress, but I imagine there's been a lot to absorb and to adjust to.

How has it been and how did your years in the Alaska legislature help prepare you for the U.S. House?

Well, since I've been in the 118th Congress, which was a very different experience than coming in to fulfill the end of the 117th congressional term on behalf of Congressman Young or not on his behalf of it, on behalf of Alaskans to fill out the remainder of his term.

But for the 118th Congress, it got off to a slow start.

It took us 15 votes to elect the Speaker of the House.

And the ten years in the legislature were very helpful in that regard because over those years I learned the value of patience and the value of letting go when you don't have control over situations.

And I think that that really was a valuable lesson that has stuck with me.

But since we were able to get our speaker elected, we have been you know, it had some cascading effects in terms of committees getting on ramped up and stood up and then further conversations within those committees when all the members membership of those various committees and subcommittees were decided.

It took us a little bit more time to establish the rules of each of those committees, but we are now in work mode.

Everyone has their assigned committees and subcommittees, like I said, and things are in full swing now.

All right.

Well, that's good to hear.

Talk a little bit about your early successes.

You got a bill passed last September and have you been able to build on that toward introducing other legislation?

And a reminder that bill would create an office of Food Security in the Department of Veterans Affairs, and it passed by a wide margin, only 49 votes against it.

Well, like I said, we it's it's taken a little bit longer to ramp up.

I think, than most Congresses.

But again, I don't have a lot of things to compare it to.

And in D.C., I do have a full complement of staff in D.C. now, we're still working on building out our our Alaska staff that is in full swing now.

But we have a legislative team and we some of them have experience in Washington, D.C. and and a few don't.

But we will be introducing more legislation as the weeks advance coming up soon.

And somebody asked me that question when I was in Juneau last week.

And the question was, you introduced all of Congressman Young's bills or many of them, but those same bills haven't been introduced, and I'm not sure that we're going to introduce all the same ones that we did in the 117th Congress.

I took my job as fulfilling the remainder of Congressman Young's term very seriously and really wanted to work on some of his legacy pieces of legislation.

And we did this Congress 118th.

I take very seriously the fact that I was elected to represent Alaska over the next two years in my own right.

And so we'll be we continue to evaluate which ones will reintroduce and which ones we won't.

You've frequently raised the issue of the need for more coalition building in Congress, more bipartisan work as polarized and divided as congressional members have become in recent years.

Are you gaining any traction with other members of the House with this message?

Some of the folks that voted against the bill that you did get passed were Freedom Caucus members.

Have you had a chance to talk to them about what their opposition was?

Not necessarily on that bill, but I am very optimistic in terms of getting work done.

Yes, we do often see people who are distractions or, you know, employing tactics that are distracting and those can be consuming if you choose to spend your time focusing on that.

But the really comforting thing or the thing that I'm most optimistic about is I was I lobbied for and got seats on Resources Committee again.

And this new term I'm on Transportation Committee, which Congressman Young served on for many years.

And it's a really good fit for Alaska because we're so enormous and we're so young and we have so many infrastructure needs.

So in the early days of getting oriented into that committee, our ranking member on the Democratic side, his name is Rick Larson.

He made it clear that and then the chairman of the committee, Sam Graves, also made it really clear that this is a working committee.

If people want drama and they actually it was very funny, he said exactly which route to take to get to a committee where there would be entertainment and drama.

But it isn't this committee, this committee.

We're all going to have our noses down and be working very hard.

We've got the FAA reauthorization bill coming up this year and many other things of great importance to the nation and to the region that Alaska belongs to.

And certainly Alaska.

So that has made me optimistic.

And then on the Resources Committee, it's much the same thing.

There have been some antics going on on both sides regarding partizanship and and kind of partizan bickering.

But the chairman of that committee, the resources committee, is Representative Bruce Westerman from Arkansas.

And he had a very longstanding good relationship with Congressman Young.

He made it clear to me early on that he, out of his appreciation for Congressman Young, intends to keep working on things that Alaska needs and and when I was talking with him about the committee, he said just, you know, don't focus too much.

There are some there are enough of us on the committee who want to get to work.

That one that subsides, we'll be back at it.

And so I am optimistic that there are many people in Congress who are there for the right reasons on both sides of the aisle and looking forward to getting work done.

Are you finding ways to start building some alliances or relationships with Republicans in the House?

Yes.

Yes.

It's not as easy as I imagined it would be.

In Juneau, things aren't as just physically divided.

It's very interesting to me that the chamber, the House floor is an auditorium style seating.

We don't have assigned seats, but the Republicans are on one side and the Democrats are on the other, and you have to physically go over to their side.

There's even elevators that people that, you know, each of the different parties tend to use, I think because of their proximity to the their the doors on the chamber's floor.

But in committee, we're also set up in a way where we don't sit by each other.

There's a lot of egalitarianism, I should say, in terms of microphone time.

They usually recognize one party and then the other and back and forth.

But just even proximity, it's challenging getting next to folks to have those conversations.

But of course, I have had those conversations.

There's a gentleman from Montana.

His last name is Rosendale.

His first name is Matt.

And he did.

There's a new kind of I don't know if it's a habit or a trend, but one of the things that a lot of the Freedom Party folks do is they ask for roll call votes on everything instead of some of the methods used to help manage times on block votes or not require individual votes.

He did not require that on a tribute bill to Congressman Young, and I really appreciated that.

And I thanked him for that.

And he acknowledged that any time it's there, there's an acknowledgment of service people or people who've had longstanding public service.

He they don't try to impede those or slow those down.

And I really appreciated that so many opportunities to reach out to folks on different issues.

Mm hmm.

Well, that sounds like a hopeful way forward for more consensus building.

You're a Democrat, but you believe in resource development in Alaska that some other Democrats don't always support.

You support people owning firearms.

Is it harder to make inroads with Republican House members or Democrats when you're sort of kind of straddling these different political beliefs?

Well, I've also been encouraged to meet many Democrats in in the caucus I belong to who are not judgmental about the way Alaskans do things and really haven't taken me to task.

I think there is an understanding that the representative from each state and each district is a reflection of their constituents, and certainly I am a reflection of the constituency of Alaska.

Do you think I'm going to kind of jump around?

Sure.

And of course, because there's so many things that I'm hoping that we have a chance to talk about.

Do you think a Magnuson Stevens bill of the kind that you would like to see is possible with Republicans in charge?

I do.

I don't.

It's you know, one of the things that I chuckle about a lot and I think about a lot is Congressman Young used to say Democrats are not our enemy.

It's the Senate, because 90% of the work that the House does dies in the Senate every year.

In addition, 90%.

That's my understanding.

That's what I've been told by by veteran legislators.

And not only that, on the House side, Representatives have half as much staff and we end up doing twice as much work, and there's four times plus as many of us.

So it's exponentially more work and more demanding because we don't have the kind of time and staff and resources and work product that they do in the Senate.

And I'm really weighing carefully what I want to spend my time on if I know there is no chance of it passing the Senate or if I know the president isn't going to sign it.

I think that for someone from an at large district meeting, I have the entire state and with a state as big as Alaska, I have to really manage my resources carefully.

And my biggest resource this time, of course, is in my staff's time.

So what are you prioritizing legislatively right now, if not Magnuson Stevens, what are you really focused.

And this isn't legislatively, but it is our number one priority.

And that's Willow and that's getting it out of the administration.

That project has so many cascading benefits and there is so much riding on this one project.

And so right now it's a full court press for myself and both of the senators and all of our staff to really work with the administration to make sure that that project gets from the final EGIS to the record of decision without too many changes.

You are on as you mentioned, you're on the Transportation and Natural Resources Committee.

Are there other committees that you'd like to seek a chair on or is having to committee assignments enough to keep you quite busy?

Two is more than enough, and we're restricted to two subcommittees on each of those committees.

So I'm on transportation and Infrastructure Committee and then my two subcommittees and there are, you know, a potential, I think of up to six on both of those, but you only can choose two.

So the two that I'm on are for transportation, the Coast Guard Reauthorization Committee or the Coast Guard oversight excuse me, committee, as well as FAA.

And those are both very critical to Alaska.

And it makes all the sense in the world that I'm on those.

I was actually asked to be the ranking vice chair of the FAA subcommittee.

And then on resources, I'm on federal lands as well as a committee referred to as WWF, which I find funny acronyms and it's wildlife waters and something else.

And I'm the vice ranking member of the Federal Lands Subcommittee, and I think I will be doing some work on Indigenous affairs.

But again, we are only allowed two subcommittees and I think that's to help us manage our workload.

President Biden just visited Ukraine to show support and then in Poland he thanked the country for their assistance as well.

Friday is the one year anniversary of Russia's invasion and starting war in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin announced that he will no longer honor the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the United States.

And now there's concern that China may be considering helping Russia with weapons.

What's your level of concern and what are you hearing from other congressional members about the threat of a larger war?

Well, to a much less, you know, much I don't even know how to say it to to lesser of concern.

Where was the Chinese balloon last week, as well as the other things that were over Alaska's airspace?

And we don't even know exactly who those were, who those belong to or and what they were doing.

Those caused a lot of concern.

And I was able to go to a Department of Defense hearing and briefing provided to members.

And I think that all of this and of much greater concern, the things you're you mentioned this illustrates how important Alaska is strategically our location.

We are I know our congressmen and our senators have always advocated for resources for our Defense Department and having good resources here.

And bases here.

And I think that all of the things that happened last week and and happening again this week and just the global concern that we have and how close we are to these foreign governments that are adversarial and they are aggressive to us.

I think all of this says we've got to invest in Alaska.

Yeah.

And it does seem like there is movement toward that.

You know, within the military's Arctic plan and that there's a growing recognition of the strategic importance of where we're located.

When you think about the many challenges that Alaska faces and the federal government can help address what rises to the top for you, and are you working in tandem with Alaska senators on these top concerns?

Well, yes, absolutely.

One of the things that there has been a lot of work and a lot of forward progress on is statewide Internet availability.

This is something that helps us stay in the modern era.

It's critical to everything we do, even to get information on when certain species are available to hunt or fish, you need to have Internet access.

Many times Fish and Wildlife and Fish and Game will say, Oh, well, that's on our website.

And accessing those things is very challenging.

Even, you know, finding out when your children's spring break is, you need to go to the school district's website.

Often there is very little that we, you know, information that we need that we aren't asked to go to a website.

So this is so important for Alaska, and I think it's really important for making sure we have real economies in Alaska, not just transfer payment economies.

Access to Internet is critical.

And this is something that both of our senators have long worked on and will continue to work on and are still bird dogging.

We are all still bird dogging this.

We don't want that investment to lag behind.

I think we're already missing some of our deadlines.

So that's one thing I care very deeply about food security issues.

Like you mentioned earlier, we saw the weakness within our logistics supply chain infrastructure during the pandemic.

We, you know, so many things that we knew were issues were accentuated and really revealed.

So unfortunately, these logistics supply chain issues, things like eggs, eggs are such a critical part of everybody's diet.

And to have that avian flu hit so many egg producing places, we certainly feel the repercussions of that.

But food banks, many of our food banks and places that help out people living in the margins, their shelves are empty.

We have the issue at the state level with SNAP or food stamp administrators, just every sector.

We're short on hands.

We have some real H.R.

issues in terms of making sure that all of our sectors are manned up and then on top of those kind of structural issues, we have a number of species that are in serious decline, such as caribou, salmon, herring, on and on.

And and those are things that, of course, are very top of mind.

Well, that's what I wanted to get to next, was you ran on a platform that included being pro fish.

What do you think needs to happen to help the troubled fisheries, salmon fisheries on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers to ensure that families can continue to survive in their communities and have some income and also get that much needed protein for winter?

Well, of course, I think that we need to make sure that all of our fisheries are sustainable and our bycatch isn't an unsustainable harvest of of incidental catches of salmon, halibut and crab.

I also think that it's important and we saw this in some of the larger funding packages that came out of the 117th Congress real investment in research.

Research takes a long time to do both, do the research and the peer review and publish it.

But all of that is critical.

We need Western science.

I think it's important that we have traditional knowledge at the table.

There are really fascinating things, things I find fascinating anyway that traditional knowledge holders have.

And an example of this is on the cusp.

Our our Western science forecasts were off by sometimes 100,000 when the whole run was 120,000.

That can be very devastating one way or the other.

And people who have a real understanding of traditional knowledge were able to look at the migratory bird return, the Canadian geese, and that has been 100% correlation, uncanny correlation on the Cusco climb since 2017.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

And you know, for someone like me, I would never think that something migrating in the sky would be a mirror of what is going to happen with the Chinook return.

But that's exact.

And on the on the Yukon, there are people who know traditional knowledge and their indicator are yellow butterflies.

If there are yellow butterflies, that means the kings are running.

If there are lots of yellow butterflies, that means that they're there in abundance.

Yeah.

So I think those things really we really need to acknowledge that in its own way.

That is also science.

It's science that goes back 12,000 years.

It is not something that has an annotated bibliography or can be cited.

Exactly, but it's still science.

And it can be cited by the people who have observed this and have a consistent record of seeing these things match up.

Yes.

Throughout time.

Yes.

And the thing I'll say is that Noah does have broad oversight over what goes on in our federal waters.

And there are some things within Magnus and Steven's act, some the the term is escaped, some standards, national standards.

And I won't go into them in detail.

But some of the standards we're hoping will be looked at and enforced are standards two, four, six, eight and nine.

And for example, I think National Standard eight relates to community sustainability.

And I think that is one that we really need to be focusing on.

As you know, Alaska has after years of adding population, is now in a population decline.

We see more migration.

What do you think is needed to help attract more people to our state and also keep young Alaskans here after they graduate?

I think it's important that we have affordable housing for young people, uh, affordable prices for all everything and good child care.

I think just the everyday things that young families need are very important.

Um, I'll.

Another thing I want to work on is the EPA web issue.

There are 30 some odd states in the nation that have this issue where if an employee is invested in a retirement system, they cannot access their social Security benefits.

And this is quite substantial.

We're talking about people who would maybe get $2,000 in Social Security benefits, having it withheld to the point where they get four or $500 for their benefit.

And that's crippling.

And I think that makes it more and more challenging to attract people and having have them stay in Alaska.

Representative Paul Taylor, you mentioned the Willow Project earlier.

I know that you've been a big supporter of that.

There is Alaska Native Corporation support, but the residents of New Exit oppose it.

What are your thoughts about how to balance the need for development and revenue against people's rights?

For what is built up around them?

Well, I'm not sure that it's 100% of the people in New York State who oppose it.

I have spoken to the chairman of their village corporation.

I've spoken to other members of the city council.

There are people in New York State who are strong supporters and want to see that project go forward.

And it's not 100%.

So I do listen to the people of no, except of course you have to take their consider you.

Of course, we are listening to the people of New Mexico and there will be substantial changes to their community if this project goes forward to the you know, I think during construction there would be large trucks passing nearby roads, one every six or 7 minutes during construction.

This is a very big decision that people in New Mexico have looked at very closely.

And there has been a lot of soul searching.

But in speaking with the chairman of their village corporation, there is a consensus among folks in their community that they want this project to go forward.

All right.

Well, thank you for helping us better understand that.

And it's amazing how quickly the time goes by.

But we're out of time.

Thank you so much, Congresswoman, for being here this evening.

Always good to see you, Lori.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank so much to Congresswoman Mary Peltola for being with us tonight.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Visit our website, Alaska Public dot org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

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Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.