AI Summary
5 min readMorris Katz, the 20-something strategist behind Grant Platner’s meteoric rise and catastrophic fall, has a confession: “I think obviously I did not see it soon enough.” Sitting with Ezra Klein in the aftermath of Platner’s campaign implosion—after a credible rape allegation, after a tattoo that looked like a Nazi symbol, after a Reddit history that included a post about sexual assault victims—Katz is not defensive. He is, instead, trying to extract something useful from the wreckage. The conversation is less a postmortem on one failed Senate campaign than a sharp, uncomfortable look at what happens when a political theory collides with reality.
The Candidate Search and Its Blind Spots
Katz and his firm, Fight, did not wait for candidates to come to them. They went looking. In Maine, the target was Janet Mills, the unpopular sitting governor. The ideal candidate, they decided, would be a veteran from outside Portland, tied to the state’s waterfront economy—a lobsterman, a fisherman, someone who lived on the same road he grew up on. Platner fit the mold. He was charismatic, angry at the status quo, and had a story that could capture the angst voters felt. The vetting document they produced found a Reddit account with problematic posts, but not the full extent of what later emerged. Katz now says that “even an even more robust process” might not have uncovered the rape alleg
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:08) **The Planner Implosion and the Fight Over Its Meaning** - Katz acknowledges the Democratic Party’s tense moment and the competing lessons being drawn from Grant Planner’s failed Senate campaign.
- 2 (07:15) **How Katz Met and Recruited Grant Planner** - Katz describes the process of searching for an outsider candidate to challenge Governor Janet Mills in Maine.
- 3 (10:00) **What Katz Saw in Planner, and What the Vetting Missed** - Katz reveals the early red flags and his own internal conflict about giving grace versus holding candidates to a high standard.
- 4 (15:21) **The Resignation of Jenny Viv McDonald and the Question of Accountability** - Katz addresses the conflict with the campaign’s former political director and the limits of a consultant’s responsibility.
- 5 (20:39) **The Lindsey Flyfield Accusation and the Danger of Dismissing Credible Stories** - Katz reflects on the accusation of physical abuse and his initial skepticism, which he now regrets.
- 6 (22:08) **The Core Paradox: The Strategy Worked and Failed at the Same Time** - Katz defends the “real people” theory while admitting the need for stricter standards.
- 7 (25:34) **Defining the “Outsider” and the “X Factor”** - Katz explains what he really looks for in a candidate beyond the simple insider/outsider binary.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Morris Katz helped orchestrate Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory and Graham Platner’s ultimately disastrous run for Senate. It’s quite a résumé for a political consultant who is still in his 20s.
Platner’s implosion could prove particularly costly for Democrats. It may mean the difference between winning and losing a Senate majority. But before the rape accusation that ended his campaign, Platner had come out of nowhere to beat Janet Mills, the sitting governor of Maine, who was Chuck Schumer’s hand-picked candidate. The lessons to take from that campaign remain angrily contested.
Katz, a senior adviser to Platner, has been central to many of the most attention-grabbing, populist campaigns in recent years: Besides Mamdani’s New York mayoral upset, he worked on John Fetterman’s 2022 Senate campaign and Dan Osborn’s 2024 independent Senate run in Nebraska. He has figured something out about this political moment. Along the way, he has become a controversial figure himself.
So what has he gotten right? And what has he learned from what he’s gotten wrong?
This episode contains strong language.
Ask Me Anything: We’re going to be recording an “Ask Me Anything” episode soon. If you would like to submit a question, email [email protected] with the subject line “AMA.”
Mentioned:
“Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior” by Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer
“How Economic Anxiety Is Driving the Democratic Socialists’ Surge” by Emma Goldberg
“The search for Carter” by Norman Mailer
“The warrior and the priest” by Ronald Brownstein
Book Recommendations:
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
The Shame by Makenna Goodman
The Fourth Branch by Daniel Squadron
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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