A former Space X engineer has filed to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins next year as an independent.
Phillip Rench, of Waterboro, is the first person to emerge as a competitor in a U.S. Senate race that's expected to be one of the most competitive in the country during next year's midterm elections.
According to his LinkedIn page, Rench spent more than five years working at Space X, the space exploration company owned by billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk. Musk has been widely criticized for his unilateral dismantling of government agencies and programs.
Rench now serves on the board of Maine Space Corp., a quasi-governmental agency created in 2023 with the goal of ensuring that the state will compete in the space economy and launch small vehicles and satellites into sub orbit. He was nominated to that position by Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat.
Rench will have to collect 4,000 voter signatures by next summer to qualify for the ballot.
Collins is expected to seek her sixth term. But her path could be complicated by Trump, whose consolidation of power in the GOP has come with loyalty demands that might not appeal to voters in a state that voted for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris last year.
She faced a similar dynamic during her 2020 re-election bid, but won a three-way contest and convincingly beat her closest rival, Democrat Sara Gideon, despite a well-funded campaign by national Democrats. That contest took place during the final year of Trump's first term and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump's second term has been more brazen both in terms of the policies he's pursued and his cabinet choices. So far, Collins has voted to confirm all but one of the president's nominations.
