A former senior engineer for Elon Musk’s SpaceX who moved back to his native Maine a few years ago filed Thursday to run as an independent in 2026 against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.
Phillip Rench of Waterboro is the first person to declare a run against the Republican senator, who turned back a massive challenge from Democrats in 2020 and figures to be in another heavily targeted race next year with few competitive states on the national map.
Rench did not respond to a message seeking comment on his run. But he filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission in the afternoon. He sits on the board of the Maine Space Corp., a quasi-government agency that was set up by the Legislature with a goal of making the state a player in the space economy by 2030.
The engineer comes out of left field for a race against Collins. But he is known well by those who have followed SpaceX over the last decade. Rench is featured in a book on the rapid expansion of the company, which Musk, the world’s richest man and an ally of President Donald Trump, founded in 2002. He envisions sending enough rockets to Mars to build a city there.
Rench spent just over five years at SpaceX starting in 2014, according to his LinkedIn page. He contributed to the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket programs as well as the Commercial Crew Program operated as a partnership with NASA. He ended his tenure as the director of a massive launch site in Texas that may soon become its own town.
He and his wife, Gwendolyn, returned to Maine in 2019, buying land in Waterboro early the next year. They started an observatory on their property after someone in the community donated a telescope to them in 2022. Rench told the Island Institute that students will be able to request observations during the day and have them emailed to them that night.
Rench was nominated by Gov. Janet Mills to the Maine Space Corp. board in 2023. He recently notified the board of his intention to run for U.S. Senate and was already set to leave that role when his term ends in June, Terry Shehata, the corporation’s executive director, said.
“We have a lot of talent in the state of Maine that’s untapped,” Rench told an interviewer last year. “We have a lot of industry that’s kind of fizzling out a bit. We’re trying to get some players interested in moving their companies here.”
