The Democrats of House District 38 selected three nominees for Representative Zach Fansler's seat this week, and their top picks are both Alaska Native women.
Tiffany Zulkosky and Yvonne Jackson are young, Yup'ik professionals who have served their region for years. In March, one of them could take a seat in a legislature under scrutiny for harboring a culture of sexual harassment.
To get a sense of the challenges they might face, KYUK sat down with Mary Peltola, formerly Mary Kapsner. She was elected to the State House to represent Bethel and the surrounding area in 1998, and served five terms in Juneau before retiring.
Peltola didn’t think much about her gender growing up. When she did, it wasn’t something that got in her way. "I was kind of raised as my dad's oldest son," she said.
Peltola grew up in the villages, then moved to Bethel when she was 12. She and her sister spent their summers commercial fishing with their father, who worked for Don Young and George Hohman. That gave the young Peltola an inside view of what politics could do for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. By the time she reached her early twenties, she wanted to fight for school appropriations, lower fuel costs and public safety. And as an Alaska Native woman, she wanted to provide a voice for minorities.
"We are just as hardworking as anybody." said Peltola. "We love our kids as much as anybody. We don't want anything more, but we don't want anything less either."
She ran for the state legislature at age 22 and lost by a grand total of 56 votes. Two years later she decided to try again. "I think at that point I was the only woman who had ever run for this district," she said. Peltola was also pregnant with her first child.
She said that she honestly couldn’t remember facing any real sexism on the campaign trail. Peltola visited each of her district’s villages at least once, and in the rare moments that she picked up on a double standard, it was supportive. Because she was visibly pregnant, constituents often insisted on carrying campaign signs for her, and women sometimes pulled her aside.
"I had women in coastal villages come up to me on the plane and say, 'I am voting for you because you're a woman,'" Peltola said. "'I want to see a woman there.'"
In Juneau it was sometimes a different story. Peltola quickly became a heavy hitter at the State House. She helped rebuild, and then chaired, the House Bush Caucus. She got herself on the Finance Committee, fought to move rural schools up on the priority list for construction projects and worked on legislation that mandated Alaska history as a high school graduation requirement. Peltola said that she was focused and tended not to notice when older men at work were patronizing, but her friends in government did.
"People in formal committees would refer to me as 'kiddo' or 'young lady,'" Peltola said with a laugh. "I wouldn't even hear it. And other people would come to me later and say, 'Boy, that really offended me. Did that offend you?'"
Peltola said that 95 percent of the men she worked with were excellent, but there were moments she brushed off or tried to work around.
"There were some pretty bad ones that I do not want to remember," she said. When asked if any of those incidents constituted sexual harassment, she said, "there were maybe one or two. Nothing as sinister as what we're seeing now."
She remembered one of those moments. Three years into her time at the State House, when Peltola was 27, she grabbed lunch at the legislative lounge. She got her plate and stepped into the buffet line. Then an older member of the Finance Committee got in line behind her and touched her inappropriately while making sexual gestures. Peltola shouted and shoved him away from her, and one of her male colleagues saw the incident. Instead of trying to intervene, he loudly started to laugh.
Peltola didn’t file a complaint about this; she had to work with the man on the Finance Committee. The best way to beat him was to build as many productive relationships with legislators as she could, and keep successfully advocating for her district.
Another challenge Peltola faced? Child care. She had all four of her children while serving in the state legislature. When her children entered school, the unpredictable length of the state’s legislative sessions made it difficult for her to keep her family in one place. "When my oldest son was learning to read, I wanted him to be in one school for the year to have one teacher," she said. "As it happened, it didn't work out that way."
She and her children bounced back and forth between Bethel and Juneau, a full day’s travel from each other. After years of service, when Peltola was pregnant with her fourth child, she wanted something different. She retired from state politics in 2009 at the age of 34.
In the aftermath of Zach Fansler’s resignation, Peltola has followed the selection process for his replacement closely. She’s excited about Tiffany Zulkosky and Yvonne Jackson, the two women the nominating committee selected. "The names that I've heard so far are outstanding, and I do think that they would represent the district," she said.
Her advice to them? Get tough, stay focused, and keep an open mind.
Correction: A previous version of this story said that Mary Peltola graduated college. We regret the error.