Sen. Mike Tipping (D-Orono) to be Awarded Edie Beaulieu Legislative Award

Sen. Mike Tipping will be awarded the 2025 Edie Beaulieu Legislative Award at our Biennial Convention later this month. Sen. Tipping — who serves as Senate Chair on the Legislature’s Labor Committee — has earned this recognition for leading on labor issues in Augusta, including sponsoring legislation to provide retirement security to mental health workers at state psychiatric facilities.

The award is named for Edie Beaulieu, a former Democratic legislator from Portland who fought tirelessly for labor, education, and public safety issues. As a longtime cleaner for the Portland Press Herald, Beaulieu represented Munjoy Hill in the Maine House from 1976 to 1986 and was the first woman to chair the Labor Committee.

Tipping, who grew up in Orono, has been deeply involved in politics since he was very young. In college he was president of his student union and spent his summers working for Maine People’s Alliance on a variety of labor related issues. After college, he went to work for MPA full time as its Communications Director. At MPA, Tipping has helped lead campaigns like the successful 2016 referendum to increase Maine's minimum wage, a 2018 referendum to provide universal home care for Maine citizens over the age of 65, as well as an environmental initiative to clean up mercury pollution in the Penobscot River.

He has also gathered signatures for paid sick days and paid family leave referendums, which became unnecessary after the Legislature and Governor passed them into law. In 2014, he published a book titled “As Maine Went: Governor Paul LePage and the Tea Party Takeover of Maine about Maine Governor.” A proud union member, Tipping served on his union’s first bargaining committee after the staff organized with the Maine Service Employees Association (MSEA-SEIU 1989).

He currently works as a senior strategist for MPA. In 2022 and 2024, Tipping was elected to the Maine Senate in District 8, which comprises Orono, Old Town, Lincoln, Lee and several rural towns in Penobscot County. As co-chair of the Labor Committee, Tipping and his colleagues have been instrumental in not only passing key labor reforms, but also keeping their caucus together to get them to the Governor’s desk.

Some of those labor victories have included strengthening collective bargaining rights for public employees, banning mandatory anti-union captive audience meetings, passing paid family medical leave, making child care more affordable for working families and much more. Tipping and his committee have also advanced legislation to protect patients in hospitals and repeatedly defeated right-to-work for less bills and efforts to weaken child labor laws. We congratulate Senator Tipping on his well-earned award for fighting for working Mainers!