Standard political vetting for a Senate candidate runs weeks and costs tens of thousands of dollars. Morris Katz and his consulting partner Daniel Moraff commissioned a three-day review for just over $6,000, and that gap is the reason New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent Monday at a news conference defending a consultant his own party is moving to blacklist.
What the condensed vetting left open
A source familiar with the early stages of the Platner campaign told Fox News Digital that Katz and Moraff ignored multiple requests from their own vetting team to dig deeper into the candidate's past. Issues that later became public included a rape accusation from an ex-girlfriend, a Nazi-linked tattoo acquired during Platner's military service, a collection of controversial deleted Reddit posts, and accounts of alleged mistreatment of women. Platner denied the rape accusation. He eventually suspended his candidacy.
After the suspension, Katz wrote on X that the team had advised Platner to step aside as soon as they became aware of the rape allegations. A community note appended to the post pointed out that the campaign had initially denied the allegation before folding.
The DSA letter and a Democratic split
The Democratic Socialists of America circulated a letter calling Katz "one of the chief parties responsible for the catastrophic campaign of scandal-ridden Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner" and urging political allies to cut ties with him. The letter described his contributions as recruiting Platner, producing video content, arranging media placements, and connecting him to political networks. Democratic sources said Katz had also pitched Platner to party leaders as a potential successor to Sen. Bernie Sanders and a possible presidential contender; Katz now denies that characterization.
The Bangor Daily News obtained a message in which Katz warned former Platner staffer Genevieve McDonald that if a story ran in its then-current form, his team would communicate directly, on the record and by name, that McDonald had violated personal trust and shared explicit falsehoods to sabotage the campaign.
Mamdani, who had previously called on Platner to drop out after the rape allegation surfaced, was asked about the DSA letter at Monday's news conference and said he will continue to work with Katz.
A second set of objections
Katz faced a separate wave of criticism earlier this year over a puberty book he authored in 2020, aimed at boys aged 10 to 12. A footnote on page 15 stated that he had planned to use images of his own penis to illustrate how genitalia develop during puberty, an idea his publishers rejected as inappropriate. Katz said the remark was a joke. The National Republican Senatorial Committee condemned him publicly, as did Libs of TikTok, the X account operated by Chaya Raichik, which called him a "perverted freak." Mamdani's office did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on Monday.