她本有望为民主党夺回参议院席位，但她关心的却只有鱼和柴油。阿拉斯加的政治与众不同。
She Could Flip the Senate. All She Wants to Talk About Are Fish and Diesel. Politics in Alaska are different.
在玛丽·佩尔托拉（Mary Peltola）的参议院竞选网站上，有一个分辨率较低的名为“鲑鱼快跑”（Salmon Run）的电子游戏。在游戏中，玩家可以扮演一条试图躲避商业拖网渔船捕捞的鱼。当你绕过渔网和来势汹汹的海洋掠夺者时，屏幕上会弹出来自该州谋求连任的共和党参员丹·沙利文（Dan Sullivan）的相关信息。“丹·沙利文收受了拖网渔业游说集团数十万美元，”其中一条写道。如果你成功通关而未被捕获，系统会祝贺你成功避开了沙利文先生的渔网。
On Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign website is a low-res video game called “Salmon Run,” in which you can play the part of a fish trying to avoid being caught by commercial trawlers. As you navigate around nets and menacing ocean predators, messages pop up about Dan Sullivan, the state’s Republican senator seeking re-election. “Dan Sullivan took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the trawling lobby,” one reads. If you clear the run without being caught, you are congratulated for avoiding Mr. Sullivan’s nets.
佩尔托拉这种将拖网渔船作为核心议题的草根竞选活动，打出的标语是“鱼、家庭和自由”。她的宣传口号在阿拉斯加冰冷水域之外的人看来，可能显得有些狭隘，甚至难以理解。
Ms. Peltola’s kelp-roots campaign, in which trawlers are a big issue, is taglined “fish, family and freedom.”Her pitch can seem parochial, even incomprehensible beyond Alaska’s frigid waters.
然而，这对于那些试图重塑其党派的活动人士来说，是一个振聋发聩的信号：在当今高度网络化、党派分明且各自为战的政治环境中，真正的局外人民主党候选人并非最左翼的那一位，而是真正花时间去过“户外”生活的那一位。
Yet it is a blaring statement to the activists trying to reshape her party: In today’s hyper-online, partisan, siloed politics, the real outsider Democratic candidate isn’t the leftmost one. It’s the one who has actually spent time, well, outside.
阿拉斯加就算不上深红，至少也是鲑鱼粉。为了打破政治逆境，现年53岁的佩尔托拉在年龄、风度和实质内容上，都与华盛顿老龄化的民主党建制派以及试图取代他们的那个日益崛起、组织严密且气势汹汹的左翼派系形成了鲜明对比。
Alaska is, if not ruby-red, at least salmon pink. In her effort to beat the political odds, Ms. Peltola, 53, offers a contrast, in age, demeanor and substance, to Washington’s aging Democratic establishment and to the faction trying to replace it — an ascendant, increasingly organized and aggressive left wing.
“我们确实需要这些职位上的人是正常人，”佩尔托拉对我说。国会里这样的人已经不多了，由于需要不断筹集竞选资金并应对不可能完成的派系纯洁性测试，除了那些权力野心最坚定的人之外，其他人全都被排挤在外了。
“We really do need people in these positions who are normal people,” Ms. Peltola told me. There aren’t many of those left in Congress, from which the constant need to raise campaign money and navigate impossible factional purity tests repels all but the most committed powerseekers.