|
 |
PN is supported by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️
The Graham Platner debacle in Maine was a terrible way to begin an electoral season that will culminate in November’s crucial midterm elections.
For months, Platner had seemed to personify a new archetype of Democratic politics — the fighter. A tattooed veteran and rural oyster farmer who was (or claimed to be) working class, as well as an articulate advocate for progressive policies like Medicare for All, Platner briefly seemed to be a one-man antidote to political ennui.
But well before the beginning of July — when Platner faced rape allegations on top of a series of other revelations of personal and sexual misconduct — it had become clear that his image was indeed too good to be true.
 |
|
That shouldn’t have been surprising, because it had been constructed by a team of political consultants and operatives who spent recent years recruiting and promoting similarly typecast “working class” candidates.
Consultant with a cause
In 2024, some of the most successful members of a new political consultant class started a business, naming it the Fight Agency. One of them was now 27-year-old wunderkind, Morris Katz, who was instrumental in recruiting Platner and in shaping his public image — just as he had done for two other “unconventional” candidates, John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Zohran Mamdani in Katz’s native New York City.
Katz is the Tribeca-raised son of a Hollywood screenwriter and wrote several screenplays himself while he was attending an elite NYC public high school. He dropped out of college in hopes of pursuing a career in Hollywood, but found his true calling in creating the media images of political candidates, starting with Fetterman’s 2022 campaign, in which he partnered with several veterans of Bernie Sanders’s presidential runs.
