WASHINGTON — Mayor Mamdani’s whiz-kid spin physician has been accused of pressuring Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner’s ex political director to lie in regards to the attractive oyster farmer’s sexting scandal — and threatened her if she didn’t.
Morris Katz, the 27-year-old hot-shot strategist who helped catapult Mamdani to Gracie Mansion, allegedly pressed former Platner marketing campaign staffer Genevieve McDonald to disclaim the sexting scandal to the press.
“Simply wish to be clear on the place we’re proper now,” Katz wrote to McDonald via a 3rd get together, in line with messages reported by Bangor Every day Information.
“If the story goes in its present iteration, we’ll talk straight on the report, and by identify, that Genevieve violated the private belief of Amy and Graham and shared specific falsehoods to sabotage the marketing campaign.”
Katz, who owns the agency Struggle Company, is working for Platner — who’s the de facto Dem nominee for Maine’s Senate race.
The 27-year-old strategist’s warning was relayed via an adviser to Maine congressional hopeful Jordan Wooden, in line with docs obtained by BDN.
McDonald had labored on Wooden’s marketing campaign till Saturday.
She was certainly one of three officers who stop Platner’s marketing campaign final fall after wild particulars about his previous emerged.
Katz had been incensed after the Platner marketing campaign caught wind of a forthcoming Wall Avenue Journal story about Platner sexting as much as a dozen ladies after marrying his spouse in 2023.
The Katz demanded that McDonald name up the Wall Avenue Journal to disclaim the sexting scandal to the outlet and report herself doing that so she may ship it to the marketing campaign, BDN reported.
However McDonald didn’t take kindly to being threatened and as an alternative went on the report with the New York Instances, which confirmed the bombshell story shortly after the Wall Avenue Journal reported it.
The outlet reported that Platner had sexted as many as a dozen ladies, although his marketing campaign claimed it was solely six.
McDonald recounted how Platner’s spouse knowledgeable her that she found her husband had despatched sexually specific photos to varied ladies whereas the marketing campaign was doing inner opposition analysis to arrange for potential filth his rivals may have the ability to dig up.
Katz had raged in opposition to McDonald on social media.
“It’s nobody’s f—ing enterprise what occurred in Graham & Amy’s marriage earlier than he was ever a candidate for workplace,” he fumed. “There ought to be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privateness, betray belief, and prioritize vengeance over decency.”
The Submit contacted the Platner marketing campaign and tried to achieve Katz for remark.
Platner, 41, shied away from the media throughout his marketing campaign occasion Sunday, and his workforce’s essential response to the bombshell tales got here from his spouse, who lower a 5-minute video addressing the controversy by scolding the media and McDonald — though not by identify.
The Marine veteran has confronted a myriad of controversies, together with Reddit posts downplaying sexual assault, defending troopers urinating on useless Taliban troopers, musing about graffiti of males’s genitalia, calling battle “probably the most fulfilling expertise,” contending that white Individuals “really are” racist and silly, amongst others.
Just lately, it emerged that he mocked a Purple Coronary heart soldier who captured wild helmet footage of himself transferring into the open to steer Taliban fireplace away from his fellow troopers.
Maybe most notorious of all, Platner is revealed to have had a tattoo on his chest resembling a Totenkopf or “loss of life’s head” image utilized by the Nazi SS. The oyster farmer claims to have gotten that tattoo in Croatia whereas drunk in 2007 and denied superior data of its Nazi hyperlinks.
Since then, he has inked over it with what he has described as a “Celtic knot with some imagery round canine.”
Platner has a 7.8 proportion level polling edge over incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), in line with the newest RealClearPolitics mixture of polls. Collins has a historical past of dramatically overperforming the RCP mixture in previous races, notably her 2020 reelection.
