Katz, now Platner’s tireless defender, once considered sexual misconduct by Democratic political candidates to be disqualifying
It’s a Katz-22.
The boy-wonder political strategist behind embattled sex-pest Graham Platner once proclaimed that similar sexual misconduct by a Democratic candidate would justify endorsing his Republican opponent.
Morris Katz, whose Fight Agency helped make Platner the presumptive Democratic nominee for Maine’s toss-up Senate seat, made the pronouncement in a series of X posts defending a former Democratic client—a North Carolina state senator—who endorsed a Republican over a Democratic candidate accused of sexual misconduct in a crucial state senate race.
Last week Platner was accused by multiple women of inappropriate behavior. Former girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield said the oysterman regularly grabbed her hard enough to leave marks and in one case twisted her arm behind her back before shoving her in a bedroom and keeping her there against her will, the New York Times reported.
Fifield said she remembered the Nazi-tattooed Platner threatening to “rape” people who broke into his home—but “not in a gay way.”
These allegations surfaced not long after the recent revelation that Platner’s wife alerted the campaign last year that Platner had sent sexually explicit material to multiple women early in their 2023 marriage, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.
Platner also had a shirtless, toilet-seat-up profile on Kik—a message and hook-up platform notorious for child exploitation content—that was still live this month.
Katz—the mastermind of Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent mayoral campaign who has admitted that he’s shared his own nudes—has so far stuck by Platner.
But in September 2020, North Carolina state senator Erica D. Smith decided to back Republican attorney Sammy Webb in his challenge to her own Democratic state house colleague, Toby Fitch.
“I am supporting Deacon Sammy Webb as a faith-based leader and I understand we are at a critical moment in our nation where we need to elect men and women of honor, integrity and character and for this race that is attorney Sammy Webb,” Smith said of the GOP lawyer at the time.
The “integrity and character” line was almost certainly no accident as Smith herself had previously accused Fitch of sexual harassment.
In a May 2018 video call, Fitch suggested that Smith could “practice” oral sex on him in order to make herself more appealing to her husband who was then incarcerated, Smith said.
In December 2018 Smith alleged Fitch told her, “Get off your knees and stop begging Republicans. … I only want to see a woman doing one thing on her knees.”
It all might have been forgotten had Smith not entered the Democratic primary for Senate in 2022.
Katz, then a student at far-left Skidmore College, signed up as a “senior advisor” for the effort for which he was ultimately paid $45,500, Federal Election Commission records show.
When news of Smith’s past support for Republicans resurfaced, Katz jumped into the fray to defend her.
“The only republican she ever supported was running against a man who’d physically assaulted her and sexually harassed her as well as many others! These are coordinated attacks made in bad faith to take down a strong black woman,” Katz said in January 2021.
In December 2020, Katz said it was excusable because the Republican she supported had been a “Never Trumper.”
“The only Republican she’s supported was running against a dem with a long history of sexual assault and was a never Trumper,” Katz declaimed.
Elsewhere Katz said it was “ridiculous” to attack Smith for her endorsement given the circumstances that she was just “standing up for herself and other victims of sexual harassment and assault.”
Webb was a “moderate,” Katz protested.
Smith ultimately withdrew from the Democratic primary and endorsed Cheri Beasley—who went on to lose to Republican Ted Budd in November 2022.
Katz notably held a raft of more moderate views during this period—but his defense of supporting Republicans over Democrats accused of sexual misconduct has not been previously reported.
“I was 21 years old, responding on behalf of a campaign, to a credible and corroborated accusation of misconduct,” Katz wrote to the Washington Free Beacon when asked for comment.
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