Maine Democrat Graham Platner is a total mess right now, slapped with allegations of emotional abuse from former girlfriends, the nazi tattoos, the Reddit posts, and the sexting. But his top aide, Morris Katz, is also in trouble, with many of his colleagues cringing at his behavior since the campaign hit these nasty speed bumps that have derailed the Platner operation.
Katz argued that Platner’s flaws show he’s a real person, and authenticity is what voters want. When the sexting scandal broke, he collapsed, claiming this weaponization of someone’s marriage is a low blow, so to speak. You don’t get to decide that anymore, dude. Everything is fair game. And it’s also a clear sign that this operation is fatigued, unable to defend what is increasingly indefensible.
Genevieve McDonald is the staffer who has earned the ire of this campaign. She worked for Platner but left after his nasty Reddit posts were exposed. She has become a target of Katz after she leaked the sexting stuff around Maine political circles and finally news outlets. How he handled it was an absolute “dumpster fire.” New York Magazine has more, along with a Democratic strategist who admitted that images of Platner’s penis being exposed this cycle are likely on the horizon. What a circus, folks. Also, please drop out, Mr. Platner, before that happens. It’s a tale of a young Democratic operative who seems to be suffering the same fate as Icarus (via NY Mag):
“I am sure all of the other Democratic campaign consultants in New York are absolutely salivating at this,” said Mike Murphy, a top aide to both John McCain and Mitt Romney and a regular on the Sunday talk-show circuit. “You do a campaign in New York, which is the absolute nerve center of Democratic politics, and it works out, anything you do after is going to get a ton of attention and you get too much credit for what you do right and too much blame for what goes wrong.”
Had some other Platner aide reached out to Genevieve McDonald, the former Platner staffer, and demanded she retract the leaked texts to journalists at The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, it would not have been as big a story. But because it was Katz, the story was picked up by the New York Post and other conservative outlets looking for ways to dent Mamdani and the socialist-aligned political movement that is behind him.
“The knives are out for him,” said another Democratic strategist, who, like many in New York politics, considers Katz a friend. “He went from being a nobody to being a rock star in a couple of months, and he’s 27 years old. There are going to be mistakes, and this is a big one. It’s a dumpster fire.”
McDonald was brought on to the Platner campaign just as it was launching, according to multiple sources in Maine. A former state lawmaker and lobster-boat captain, she was working as a renewable-energy consultant when Platner, whom she had only a glancing acquaintance with, called to offer her a job as the campaign’s political director. She introduced him at rallies and to her network but left the campaign after old Reddit posts of Platner’s were unearthed in which he made racist and misogynistic remarks; the candidate apologized.
The Platner campaign has dismissed McDonald as nothing more than a disgruntled employee, and McDonald has admitted almost as much. She asked for severance and was denied it, but what really set her off was when Platner, appearing on The Briefing With Jen Psaki on MSNBC disputed McDonald’s claim she didn’t know about the Reddit posts. McDonald went to work for Jordan Wood, a good-government advocate mounting a long-shot congressional bid. She began telling people in Maine politics about Platner’s sexts in the hopes that Democrats would recognize that he would be a flawed general-election candidate against Republican incumbent Susan Collins and would nominate Governor Janet Mills instead.
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“After WSJ reached out to the Platner campaign for comment, Morris Katz demanded that I call the WSJ, retract my comments, tell them their reporting was inaccurate and send him a recording of the call,” McDonald wrote on Facebook.
The Bangor Daily News didn’t repeat McDonald’s Facebook allegations but reported that Katz wrote in the message, “If the story goes in its current iteration we’ll communicate directly on the record, and by name, that Genevieve violated the personal trust of Amy and Graham and shared explicit falsehoods to sabotage the campaign.”
The network of New York political operatives cringed when they saw Katz’s efforts to get ahead of the story. “First of all, you never put that kind of thing in a text message,” said one New York strategist. “And second of all, you never have a man do it.” Added another, “I think at some point you just have to realize that the person you are dealing with on the other side is not listening to reason and you have to cut bait and figure out how to respond.”
Katz and his team of self-proclaimed wunderkinds still believe Platner is impressive after winning a New York City mayoral race, which, on its face, isn’t that remarkable. It could have been a Ficus plant—any Democrat would’ve won. Any candidate claiming to be a socialist and showing ambivalence toward Israel would’ve also won, and that’s what Mamdani is. Now, dealing with actual damning information about Platner, Katz doesn’t seem to know what to do. And when pictures of Platner’s genitals are leaked, how will they handle it, because they made a hash out of this one?
Are we going to see pictures of Graham Platner’s penis before this is all over?” asked one strategist. “I think we almost certainly will.”
It’s going to happen. Brace for impact.