Election 2026
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U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and Democrat Troy Jackson are closing their race with a fight over thousands of Maine shipbuilders, pitting a five-term senator many rank-and-file workers credit for keeping their shipyard busy against a career labor organizer.
The International Association of Machinists’ Maine State Council unanimously endorsed Jackson in July, aligning with many other Democratic-affiliated unions. But its Local S6, which represents more than 4,000 Bath Iron Works employees and backed Collins in 2014, has stayed out of the Senate race for the second straight cycle.
The split at BIW distills the campaign. Collins is running on seniority and the federal money she has steered to the shipyard as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, while Jackson’s politics are rooted in the labor movement, including close ties to the local’s parent union.
Days before the election, rank-and-file workers and union leaders remain at odds over the future of perhaps Maine’s most famous employer. Its roughly 6,800 workers include commuters from more conservative inland towns. Many are working-class men, a group President Donald Trump has dominated in recent years.
“The sentiment inside the shipyard does not match the endorsement from IAM,” Ray Gauthier, a Collins supporter, said Friday. “It’s appalling to me that anybody who works at the shipyard would not support her.”
Jackson has been endorsed by more than 20 unions, and Local S6 was behind his third-place gubernatorial run. Its 2014 endorsement of Collins in a race she easily won over Democrat Shenna Bellows was the first time it had backed a Republican, according to her campaign.
The IAM paid Jackson $90,000 as a consultant from March 2025 until August, after he won the Senate nomination, according to his financial disclosure. In 2019, while working for the union’s Lisbon office, then-Senate President Jackson warned BIW that lawmakers could reconsider a $45 million state tax break over its hiring practices.
The Collins campaign pointed to a September letter from more than 100 BIW workers, organized by Gauthier, crediting her with helping bring in almost $11 billion in Navy contracts since 2020. It also cited $300 million this year in wage enhancements, shared with Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi, and money for training, child care and housing. The congressional delegation celebrated a federal decision this month clearing the yard for another destroyer.
Jackson, who told reporters in Brunswick on Wednesday that he would push for more ships in Maine rather than Mississippi, has called what Collins has brought the state a “pittance” compared with Trump administration cuts. Hours later at the shipyard’s South Gate, Collins pointed reporters to the workers.
“Ask a lot of workers at BIW,” Collins said.
Jackson and IAM allies argue that Collins could do more for the shipyard when she has too often voted with President Donald Trump. Dave Sullivan, who worked at the yard for nearly four decades and is now IAM’s general vice president for the Eastern Territory, told voters at a Jackson event this month that Collins is “horrible on shipbuilding.”
He pointed to how the Navy has split destroyer work between the two yards that build them. Under a 2023 multiyear deal, Ingalls is building seven destroyers to BIW’s three, after a 2018 deal gave Ingalls six of 10. Sullivan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gauthier countered that Ingalls, which builds a wider variety of ships, has greater capacity. Defense News reported in 2023 that the split reflected Ingalls’ faster delivery as Bath dug out of a backlog.
Jackson’s support for union workers is well known, Gauthier added. But he argued that Jackson’s progressive stances on social issues and immigration enforcement may rankle members who have long backed Collins.
The Jackson campaign says labor outreach has been central to the former logger’s bid and that he would keep pushing for more ships and funding for BIW.
“Troy is a strong supporter of BIW and the Local S6 union shipbuilders,” David Farmer, a Jackson spokesperson, said. “That won’t change, period.”
Tim Suitter, president of Local S6, did not respond to requests for comment. He recently told The New Yorker that “we have a very, very strong union ally in Troy Jackson,” but suggested Collins’ argument on seniority was on the mark.
“Is he going to go in and sit on the Appropriations Committee as a freshman?” he asked. “Nope.”