Susan Collins Corruption & Ethics Military Maine

Lockheed Martin Became Susan Collins's Biggest Donor in Two Months. Then She Voted to Buy 83 More of Its Late, Over-Budget F-35s.

In May and June 2023, Lockheed Martin employees and executives gave Susan Collins $59,500 — a quarter of all contributions to her main campaign fund in those two months. In July she voted to fund 83 new F-35s, weeks after federal auditors flagged the program's costs.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 16, 2026

Lockheed Martin Became Susan Collins's Biggest Donor in Two Months. Then She Voted to Buy 83 More of Its Late, Over-Budget F-35s. — Photo: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images, via The Intercept

A spokesperson for the Senate Appropriations Committee says Susan Collins backs the F-35 fighter jet because it's a "longstanding bipartisan defense priority." The campaign money tells a story about timing.

The Intercept reported this week that in the spring of 2023 — while Collins was the top Republican on the Senate subcommittee that writes the military's budget — employees and top executives of Lockheed Martin, the company that builds the F-35, poured money into her campaign. Weeks after the money stopped, she voted to buy 83 more of the planes.

The money

From May 1 to June 30, 2023, Lockheed Martin employees and executives gave $59,500 to Collins's campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records the Intercept reviewed.

That made Lockheed her biggest single source of money in that window. Lockheed donations made up a quarter of all contributions to her main campaign fund during those two months. The next-biggest source, Charter Communications, was a distant second.

On top of that, lobbyists working for Lockheed gave her another $5,000, and the corporate PACs of Lockheed's lobbying firms gave $5,500 more.

And here's the part that stands out: according to the FEC data, virtually all of the money Lockheed workers have given Collins during her current term came in that single two-month burst. It wasn't steady support. It was a wave, and it hit at a very specific moment.

The moment

Collins was then the ranking member on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee — the Republican leader of the panel that decides how much the Pentagon gets to spend and on what.

That spring was the worst possible time for the F-35. The program was already more than a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over its original cost estimate. On May 30, 2023, the Government Accountability Office — Congress's own watchdog — put out testimony criticizing the program, saying the Pentagon's plan not to manage the engine and cooling upgrades as a separate program would limit Congress's insight into future cost increases, and citing late deliveries.

In July 2023 — less than two months after the GAO report — Collins voted to fund 83 new F-35 jets. When the final military budget was signed later that year, she celebrated what it would mean for Maine. Lockheed says the F-35 program has had a nine-figure economic impact in the state.

What the experts say

Dan Grazier, a military spending analyst, told the Intercept that Collins's spot on the subcommittee likely played a role in the donations.

William Hartung, another longtime analyst of Pentagon spending, put the cost of that kind of politics plainly: "If we buy things because they're in the state of a powerful member, we're not going to have a coherent arsenal."

The Appropriations Committee denies any connection. "Sen. Collins did not support the F-35 because of donations that she received," committee spokesperson Phoebe Keller told the Intercept, calling the jet "a longstanding bipartisan defense priority." Lockheed wouldn't answer questions about the 2023 surge.

To be clear about what this shows: the Intercept notes that the donations themselves don't prove wrongdoing by Collins or her donors. What they show is a company that badly needed Congress to keep buying its troubled jet, sending a quarter of a senator's money in the exact window she was deciding whether to.

Not the first time

This is becoming a familiar story with Susan Collins.

Truck maker AM General's employees and PAC sent committees tied to Collins $58,000 while Congress spent $345 million on trucks the Army called "excess".
ProPublica reported that a defense contractor's CEO told the FBI he funneled illegal donations to her campaign while she steered money to his company — and Trump's Justice Department let that bribery probe die. Collins denies it.
The Intercept also found that Textron, whose subsidiary Howe & Howe builds a robotic combat vehicle the Army canceled, had its PAC give $3,000 to PACs associated with Collins days after she criticized the cancellation as "terribly unfair and a real mistake." Keller says that wasn't the reason for her support either.

Every time, the defense is the same: the program was good for Maine, and the money had nothing to do with it. And every time, the money arrives close to the decision.

What the filings show

In May and June 2023, Lockheed Martin employees and executives gave Susan Collins $59,500 — a quarter of everything her main campaign fund took in during those two months, and virtually all the money Lockheed workers have given her this term. She was the top Republican on the Senate's military-spending panel at the time, and in July 2023 she voted to fund 83 more F-35s, a program already more than a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over its original cost estimate.