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In May 2023,<\/span> the Pentagon\u2019s shiny new fighter jet was not looking so shiny or new.<\/p>\n Already a decade late and nearly $200 billion over its original cost estimate, the F-35 program faced a new crisis. An internal government watchdog report detailed a cascade of new problems<\/a> with the program, which was in a period of flux amid plans to upgrade the jet\u2019s engine and cooling system.<\/p>\n The report<\/a> from the Government Accountability Office criticized the Pentagon for lumping those upgrades in with the overall purchase of the planes. Conflating the two, the authors said, would limit congressional insight into cost increases. And they criticized the contractors behind the aircraft for failing to deliver the F-35 in a timely manner.<\/p>\n For Lockheed Martin, the main defense giant overseeing the development of the F-35, the timing was far from ideal. In a few weeks, Congress was set to debate the Pentagon\u2019s mammoth budget \u2014 and with it, new funding for the military\u2019s purchase of F-35 jets.<\/p>\n Collins was the largest recipient of Lockheed cash in the period surrounding the inspector general report.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n So Lockheed and its lobbyists went on a charm offensive in Washington. The weapons maker shelled out hundreds of thousands over a two-month period, in what the money-in-politics watchdog Open Secrets described<\/a> as \u201cone of the largest coordinated lobbying efforts\u201d around that year\u2019s military budget.<\/p>\n No member of Congress benefited more than Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who at the time served as the ranking member on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.<\/p>\n From May 1 to June 30, 2023, employees and top executives from Lockheed Martin donated $59,500 to Collins\u2019s campaign committee. The donations were outliers during that period: Collins was among the largest recipients of Lockheed cash; the company was her largest single donor over those two months; and it was the largest spending blitz on Collins by Lockheed compared to the same period in other years.<\/p>\n The effort appeared to pay off for Lockheed. In July 2023, less than two months after the release of the Government Accountability Office report, Collins voted in favor of appropriating funds to purchase 83 new F-35 jets. Later that year, when the final version of the military budget was signed into law, Collins celebrated the economic boon she said it would bring to the state of Maine.<\/p>\n In response to questions from The Intercept, Phoebe Keller, a spokesperson for the Republican-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee, said Collins\u2019s support for the jet had nothing to do with donations from Lockheed or any other firm.<\/p>\n \u201cThe F-35 jet program is a longstanding bipartisan defense priority,\u201d Keller said. \u201cSen. Collins has always publicly supported the F-35 jet program, as dozens of both Republican and Democratic Senators.\u201d<\/p>\n Collins\u2019s position on the Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee likely played a role in the outsized donations, according to analyst Dan Grazier. And Collins, for her part, would have good reason to approve the spending: The F-35 program, Lockheed claims<\/a>, has had a nine-figure economic impact in Maine.<\/p>\n In the final weeks of the biggest fight of her political career against Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, fresh scrutiny on Collins\u2019s donations from defense contractors has become a sore spot for her campaign.<\/p>\n In some cases, the senator\u2019s interactions with defense firms are the routine for Washington: glad-handing, lobbying, contributions, and directing pork-barrel spending back home. Not all of it, though, is standard.<\/p>\n Last month, a bombshell report in ProPublica detailed an FBI investigation into an alleged pay-to-play scheme<\/a>. A former defense contractor claimed to federal agents that he worked with figures tied to Collins to disguise campaign donations \u2014 and got federal contracts totaling $32 million in return. (The FBI probe fizzled after Trump returned to office and purged the bureau; Collins denied wrongdoing, pushing back on elements<\/a> of the report.)<\/p>\n On Wednesday, more than 250 Mainers signed a letter to the state\u2019s attorney general asking the official to investigate the allegations of corruption, according to Maine Morning Star<\/a>, a local news outlet.<\/p>\n And earlier this month, The Intercept reported on donations from another defense contractor, AM General, and its parent company, whose employees gave $58,000 to fundraising committees associated with Collins after a damning assessment from the Army put its federal contracts in jeopardy<\/a>.<\/p>\n As with the AM General donations, the contributions by employees and lobbyists of Lockheed Martin do not indicate wrongdoing by Collins or her donors. <\/strong>They instead illuminate how companies that garner lucrative contracts zero in on powerful members of Congress, who often tout the benefits to their states.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an example of what\u2019s wrong with our approach to buying weapons,\u201d said William Hartung, an analyst who has written critically<\/a> of defense spending and influence peddling in Washington. \u201cIf we buy things because they\u2019re in the state of a powerful member, we\u2019re not going to have a coherent arsenal.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Collins was not the only member of Congress to push for funding the F-35, which enjoyed broad bipartisan<\/a> support \u2014 especially from lawmakers with eligible firms and facilities in their states<\/a>. And she was not the only one to benefit from the largesse of Lockheed Martin.<\/p>\n From May 1 to June 30, 2023, Lockheed\u2019s corporate PAC doled out $421,000<\/a> in a bipartisan blitz to various campaign political action committees, campaign funds, state parties, and charitable foundations. (Aside from 2024, the year of the presidential election, contributions in that two-month period in 2023 eclipsed subsequent years. In the same period this year<\/a>, Lockheed\u2019s corporate PAC made 128 donations totaling $236,000; last year<\/a>, it gave $286,000 across 158 donations during the same period.)<\/p>\n Collins was by far the biggest single beneficiary of the influx of cash \u2014 which came at a time when she was not actively campaigning. And, unlike the donations spread out to other campaign committees, the cash going from Lockheed into Collins\u2019s coffers during those months came exclusively in the form of individual donations by employees and executives, including the firm\u2019s CEO and chief operating officer, data<\/a> from the Federal Election Commission shows.<\/p>\n Of the 60 donations of $1,000 or more during May and June of that year, 56 went to Collins.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Lobbyists working for Lockheed contributed another $5,000 to Collins during that period, and corporate PACs for Lockheed\u2019s lobbying firms shelled out another $5,500 total, according to FEC disclosures.<\/p>\n Among individual contributions by Lockheed employees, donations to Collins made up more than 10 percent of all donations during the two-month period surrounding the watchdog report. <\/p>\n Only the firm\u2019s in-house employee PAC, which received 75 percent of all employee donations, took in more from figures tied to Lockheed. Collins got more than twice as much as the next highest recipient, ActBlue, the Democratic Party-aligned fundraising vehicle, which received 4 percent of all Lockheed employee contributions in that period, according to FEC data<\/a>.<\/p>\n The vast majority donations from Lockheed employees and officials were under $1,000. Of the 60 donations of $1,000 or more during May and June 2023, 56 went to Collins<\/a>.<\/p>\n Virtually all employee contributions from Lockheed workers and executives to Collins during her current term came during that two-month window, according to the FEC<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lockheed donations made up a quarter of all contributions during May and June 2023 to Collins\u2019s main fundraising arm, Collins for Senator. The next runner-up was telecom giant Charter Communications, whose employee contributions made up just 8 percent of gifts to the Collins campaign<\/a> in the second quarter of the 2023 fiscal year.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Lockheed did not answer specific questions regarding the reason for the sudden influx of individual contributions to Collins in 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cOur employee PAC program continues to observe long-standing principles of bi-partisan political engagement in support of our business interests,\u201d the spokesperson wrote in an email.<\/p>\n\n
Fight of Her Political Life<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Lockheed Giving<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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