Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s marketing campaign guru — now dealing with warmth for allegedly threatening a whistleblowing ex-staffer to US Senate hopeful Graham Platner — has his palms in a sequence of different congressional bids by far-left candidates.
Wunderkind Morris Katz was ripped for his alleged soiled techniques following a report within the Bangor Each day Information Sunday that he tried to browbeat former Platner marketing campaign staffer Genevieve McDonald into denying that the married oyster farmer sexted with a number of girls.
The intercourse scandal is the most recent controversy to hit Democrat Platner’s bid to knock off GOP Sen. Susan Collins and has tarnished the gleaming profile of Katz — who’s concerned with a number of native lefty candidates this election cycle.
He’s an instrumental a part of the populist marketing campaign for Democratic Socialists of America member Claire Valdez, a Queens state assemblywoman vying for an open seat in New York’s seventh Home District.
Valdez has been endorsed by her DSA comrade Mamdani, whom 27-year-old Katz has been broadly credited with serving to catapult to Metropolis Corridor.
Valdez’s marketing campaign declined to remark Monday when requested about Katz’s alleged menace within the Platner race. Mamdani additionally didn’t remark.
Katz is alleged to be advising Mamdani-backed former Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s difficult incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman from the left within the Democratic major for the tenth Home District.
He was additionally employed by the marketing campaign of state Assemblyman Micah Lasher, who’s working in a crowded Democratic major for the open twelfth Home District.
Neither marketing campaign returned requests for remark.
Katz’s agency, Battle Company, which he runs with different liberal political operatives, has additionally achieved marketing campaign work for Nebraska impartial candidate Dan Osborn, a mechanic working for US Senate.
Katz is described on Battle Company’s web site as a political strategist who “hates established order politics and loves long-shots.”
“As snug in Philadelphia union halls as he’s in auto outlets in Nebraska, Morris is at all times looking out for nontraditional candidates which are keen to tackle powerful fights,” his bio reads.
The political whiz-kid allegedly pressured McDonald, Platner’s former political director, to assist cease the Wall Road Journal from reporting that the candidate had sexted a number of different girls after marrying his spouse in 2023.
“If the story goes in its present iteration, we’ll talk instantly on the file, and by title, that Genevieve violated the non-public belief of Amy and Graham and shared specific falsehoods to sabotage the marketing campaign,” Katz communicated to McDonald by an middleman, in response to the Bangor Each day Information.
When the story got here out over the weekend, Katz whined on-line it was “nobody’s f—king enterprise” what occurred between Platner and his spouse, Amy, earlier than he began his run for workplace.
Katz additionally fumed about “incompetent, opportunistic operatives” who “prioritize vengeance over decency.”
One political operative mentioned the alleged menace was “ill-advised.”
“Once you’re attempting to kill a narrative, all bets are off. However when the story is occurring, don’t make it worse,” the supply mentioned. “Katz simply made it worse.”
The marketing campaign hotshot comes from a family of privilege: he grew up in Tribeca with a father who’s a profitable playwright and producer and a mom who’s a youngsters’s e-book creator.
His godfather was the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, the New York Instances reported in a shiny profile earlier this yr — one among a number of Katz has been the topic of since Mamdani’s gorgeous election victory.
“Morris was born on third base, reached dwelling plate on error and now, he thinks he’s Babe Ruth who can coach all the baseball groups into successful the World Sequence?” one Dem operative snarked.
Battle Company declined remark Monday.
