Alaska Senate Race Ads Mislead on Peltola’s Votes on Military Pay Raise

Ads in the Alaska Senate race are trading competing claims about former Rep. Mary Peltola’s votes on military pay raises.

In late 2023, Peltola, a Democrat, voted in favor of a compromise defense bill that included a 5.2% pay increase for members of the military. Earlier that year, she voted against a House version of the bill that included several Republican amendments she opposed.

TV ads from Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and a super PAC supporting him exploit that bit of legislative messiness to make misleading claims that Peltola opposed military pay raises. She didn’t.

Rather, her votes reflect the political reality at the time. The House was controlled by Republicans, and the Senate by Democrats (including the independents who caucused with them). In the House bill, Republicans added several amendments, which Peltola and other Democrats criticized as partisan “poison pills.” Many of those Republican amendments were stripped away in a compromise conference report negotiated between the House and Senate.

Peltola, who served for two and a half years in the House, is now challenging Sullivan for his Senate seat. An open “jungle” primary guided by Alaska’s ranked-choice voting will be held on Aug. 18. The top four vote-getters will advance to the November general election. The race is rated a toss-up by Cook Political Report.

According to the narrator in an ad from Last Frontier PAC, a super PAC that supports Sullivan, Alaska voters “fired” Peltola from the House in 2024 in part because “Mary Peltola voted against a pay raise for our troops.”

Similarly, an ad from Sullivan’s campaign seeks to contrast Sullivan’s service in the Marine Corps with Peltola’s record, saying, “Others sell out, become D.C. lobbyists, and take orders from the lower-48 liberals.” On screen the ad says, “Mary Peltola Voted Against Pay Raise for Alaska’s Troops.”

We reached out to the Sullivan campaign but did not get a response. A spokesperson for Peltola’s campaign said the ads are “lying about her record.”

“As the mother of two Coasties, as an Alaskan, and as an American, Mary has always stood with our servicemembers and veterans who sacrifice to ensure our safety and freedom – securing the biggest pay raise for our troops in decades and fighting to expand benefits for servicemembers, veterans, and their families,” the spokesperson said.

Both pro-Sullivan ads cite Peltola’s July 2023 vote in the House against the National Defense Authorization Act, which included a 5.2% raise for members of the military.

At the time, Peltola called it “one of the most difficult votes I’ve ever had to take.” She specifically criticized Republican amendments added to the bipartisan bill, including one that would have limited abortion access for military personnel.

“We shouldn’t be pitting pay raises that they [military members] deserve against the reproductive freedoms that they also deserve,” Peltola said in a prepared statement at the time. “That is a false choice, created for purely political reasons, and I look forward to negotiations with the Senate’s version of the bill where this issue will be discussed further. I will advocate strongly to return to the bipartisan, policy-focused bill that came out of committee, and will gladly vote for a bill that fully protects our troops and their families.”

Indeed, some of the amendments Peltola had criticized were stripped away when the House and Senate negotiated a compromise defense bill. Peltola voted in favor of the compromise conference report, which still included the 5.2% pay raise for the military. Sullivan also voted for the compromise bill in the Senate.

Peltola’s Ad

Peltola touted her vote in a recent TV ad.

In the ad, Peltola says she “pushed through the largest pay increase for our soldiers in decades.”

Whether Peltola “pushed through” the pay raise is a subjective characterization. As we said, Peltola did vote for the compromise bill (as did Sullivan), and it included a 5.2% pay raise for military members. And that was the biggest military raise in more than two decades. (Peltola’s campaign claimed that she “helped craft” the bipartisan NDAA, noting that she co-sponsored several amendments — one of which was included in the final law. But none of those amendments was related to the military pay increase.)

As we have explained, military raises are automatically determined by a formula set by law. Federal law mandates that military pay raises be equal to the change in the Labor Department’s annual Employment Cost Index, or ECI. The president can propose a higher or lower pay raise, and Congress can set the figure in legislation, overriding the automatic increase or a presidential proposal if the legislation becomes law. But in this case, the 5.2% raise was in line with the ECI at the time.

Peltola’s campaign pointed us to a Congressional Budget Office report that notes: “Lawmakers have often overridden the formula for service members by temporarily changing the law to specify a different pay raise for a single year through the annual defense authorization and appropriations acts while reverting to current law for future years.” But in every year of President Donald Trump’s first term, and every year of Joe Biden’s presidency, Congress has approved military pay raises in lockstep with the ECI figure.

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-- By  Regina E. Zaracho Baez

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