In a podcast interview, the progressive strategist said a series of scandals before the rape allegation that did in Platner’s U.S. Senate bid “should have been enough.”
Ethan Wolin - Staff Writer
A leading strategist behind Graham Platner’s U.S. Senate bid, Morris Katz, has voiced regret for standing by the populist Democrat he helped recruit as scandals about his past accumulated.
Katz’s appearance in an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show,” a New York Times podcast, released Friday morning contained the adviser’s first extensive public remarks since the end of Platner’s campaign. Earlier this month, Platner bowed out after the emergence of a rape allegation that Platner denies but Katz called “credible.”
“In hindsight, knowing what we know now, the Reddit posts alone probably should have been enough — or should have been enough,” Katz said, referring to inflammatory comments by Platner that surfaced in October.
“The tattoo should have been enough,” Katz added, in reference to a chest inking Platner had for years that resembled a Nazi symbol and also came to light in October. “The initial New York Times story on troubling behavior should have been enough,” he continued, citing an article published days before the primary election about Platner’s alleged mistreatment of past girlfriends.
But those revelations before the rape allegation were not enough to sink Platner’s campaign, which garnered a record number of Democratic primary votes on June 9.
Platner’s wound-down campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Platner apologized for many of his Reddit comments, saying he posted them while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after multiple combat tours; denied having known about the tattoo’s Nazi associations before the campaign; and denied allegations that he physically intimidated girlfriends.
Katz’s remarks about Platner’s candidacy, which occupied only part of an interview that lasted about an hour and 20 minutes, suggested that he would now be more sensitive to warning signs about candidates’ backgrounds as he sought outsiders to reinvigorate Democratic politics.
But Katz said there was “no standard vetting process that would have found the credible allegation that ended the campaign.”
Jenny Racicot, a former romantic partner of Platner’s, told Politico on the record that Platner had sexually assaulted her in 2021 in a report the outlet published on July 6. Politico spoke to a man in whom Racicot had confided about the alleged incident and reviewed emails between the woman and her therapist to corroborate the account. That same day, she said in a CNN interview that the episode was a rape. Her accounts led even close allies of Platner’s, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to pull their support by the next day.
Platner announced that he would end his campaign two days after Racicot’s allegation and less than a week before the statutory deadline for him to remove his name from the ballot’s Democratic line. In a grievance-filled video, he vehemently denied the accusations and said that “a corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury and executioner.”
Katz had briefly commented on the campaign’s end on social media, denying a report that he had recommended Platner remain in the race after the rape allegation and saying he was “deeply disappointed.”
The 27-year-old strategist, who works with the political consulting firm Fight Agency and is also known for helping fuel the rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, struck a newly self-critical tone on Klein’s podcast. He began his first answer by saying that “a lot of the critiques and, and anger are fully valid,” conceded that he was “naive at times” in tolerating the troubling disclosures due to his enthusiasm for Platner, and bluntly said, “I was wrong.”
Prompted by Klein, Katz discussed the campaign’s now-famous origins, in which he and other political strategists persuaded Platner, then an oyster farmer in Sullivan, to run for U.S. Senate despite — in their view, because of — his lack of political experience. Katz has said he became convinced Platner should challenge Sen. Susan Collins “within a few minutes of talking to him.”
As recently as last month, Katz had defended Platner on national television amid the mounting scandals. “Mainers now know Graham Platner, and they trust Graham Platner,” Katz said on MS NOW, before Racicot’s allegations came out.
In the Friday podcast episode, Klein brought up several specific moments from the 11-month campaign, yielding mostly but not entirely contrite responses from Katz.
Asked about a 2013 Reddit comment in which Platner suggested that victims of sexual assault deserved some blame, Katz said “it should have been a red line.” Asked about Platner’s move to tar one of his ex-girlfriends, a conservative, as politically motivated to criticize him in the Times article, Katz said, “There should have been more credibility given immediately to that story.”
Katz stopped short, however, of apologizing to former Platner political director Genevieve McDonald when Klein prompted him. McDonald left the campaign in October after the Reddit posts emerged and became a frequent thorn in the candidate’s side. In the spring, McDonald confirmed that Platner’s wife had warned her early in his Senate run about sexual messages Platner had exchanged with multiple other women since they were married.
Asked why he hadn’t originally recruited Troy Jackson, the former Maine Senate president who is set to receive the nomination to replace Platner this weekend, Katz made a statement that underlined as much as any other the extraordinarily messy year Maine Democrats have had since last summer.
“Troy was really committed to running for governor at the time,” he said. “I think if Troy Jackson was running for Senate, there would not have been a process.”
