Politics
Platner is finished. Does the same fate await the out-of-state consultants who recruited him?
When Daniel Moraff showed up on Graham Platner’s doorstep last summer, the oyster farmer had a message for the young political operative who had traveled to the Maine coast to convince him to run for the U.S. Senate: “Get the fuck off my property.”
It took weeks of prodding before Platner relented, according to two people who worked on the campaign. But once he did, Moraff, 34, and a handful of other out-of-state consultants who had plucked him from obscurity wasted no time selling him as far more than just a Democrat who could finally topple Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
In an email last August to fellow Democratic operatives, Moraff described Platner as “a cross between a rugged JFK and Bernie Sanders” and hailed him as “one of the most talented politicians of our time. Maybe any time.”
The email, which was obtained by Blue Light News, carried the subject line: “I think this guy is going to be president.”
Months later, as Platner barnstormed Maine as the rugged, anti-establishment antidote to the Washington elite, another high-profile consultant was boasting about him hundreds of miles away at a swanky dinner party in the Manhattan apartment of fashion designer Tory Burch.
Morris Katz, the 27-year-old ad maker and strategist with Fight Agency who was being heralded as a wunderkind for having helped elect Zohran Mamdani mayor of New York City, was holding court with roughly two dozen prominent guests about what he cast as a repeatable solution for Democrats, according to a person who attended the dinner, granted anonymity to describe a private event.
“We found a model here to win over working-class voters,” the attendee recalled Katz saying. Find “a guy that looks like he’s a union working-class guy” and put him forward, Katz said, the attendee also recalled.
But Platner’s implosion — a cascade of scandal that culminated in a sexual assault allegation that drove him to drop out of the Maine race last week — has thrown into question far more than the one Senate seat.
The downfall of Platner, who denies the assault claim, has cast doubt on the model of scouring battleground states for candidates who fit the mold of charismatic outsider, and has left an uncertain future for the circle of operatives who engineered Platner’s rise. It’s not just Moraff and Katz facing the heat: Fight Agency, the buzzy progressive firm founded by veteran strategist Rebecca Katz, which Moraff is not a part of, had been riding a remarkable hot streak after propelling Mamdani to City Hall and sweeping several closely watched New York primaries last month — victories that gave momentum to a progressive power shift and made its strategists among the most sought-after and scrutinized operatives in Democratic politics.
“In the year and a half since FIGHT launched, we have taken on the DC establishment and the political machine time after time, and won,” Rebecca Katz and Morris Katz said in a joint statement to Blue Light News. “We have defeated establishment incumbents, FIGHT has shown in district after district across the country that there is a hunger for a populist politics that takes on a broken status quo . We make ads, advise candidates on strategy, and win races — we are proud of the work we do. And we enjoy doing it together. While there’s no relation, we are family.”
Moraff declined to comment.
Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic operatives, former campaign officials and people who worked with Fight Agency and Moraff on other campaigns — along with internal text messages, emails and documents reviewed by Blue Light News — paint a damning portrait of how the Platner advisers sold an under-vetted candidate as the future of the party despite warnings from the campaign’s own staff. And it wasn’t just isolated to Maine.
They all now face the same daunting question: Who will trust them again with managing a high-stakes campaign?
“Other candidates going forward are going to be like: Do we really want to hire these guys?” said a former Platner adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the two Katzes, who are not related, Moraff and his fiance and business partner Leanne Fan.
Most of the people interviewed by Blue Light News for this story were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive, private nature of the information they divulged.
Platner’s campaign collapse — which came after Blue Light News exclusively reported on allegations that he forced a woman into sex — has sent Democrats into a frenzy to find a new candidate to go up against Collins in a contest that’s critical for them to have a shot at flipping control of the Senate in November.
How much the Democratic Party’s establishment and progressive wings are going to hold Platner’s consultants responsible for what ends up happening in Maine remains an open question.
Platner did not return calls and text messages from Blue Light News this week. In response to the sexual assault accusation, he said earlier this month: “Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.”
Still, even given all the knives out against them, Fight Agency, Moraff and the Platner team managed to get an unknown oyster farmer to best a sitting governor in the Senate primary, handing a major defeat to the Democratic establishment — which appears to have been waiting for a moment like Platner’s late implosion to try and strike back.
“What they have done is professional malpractice at the expense of the party’s interests,” said Rahm Emanuel, who has been a vocal critic of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and has been on the receiving end of shade from Rebecca Katz. ”I’m about winning — flipping red to blue at the presidential, Senate, gubernatorial, congressional, and state and local levels — and what they have done is about advancing their financial interests at the expense of the party.”
“Haven’t seen any Democrat talk like this guy”
A vicious round of finger-pointing has erupted across the Democratic consulting class, which includes rival firms already circulating opposition-research documents focused exclusively on Fight Agency and its most prominent faces, Rebecca Katz and Morris Katz. And Moraff is facing an intense pile-on of his own. The two young men were central in prodding Platner into the race and steering his campaign through its tumultuous early months.
Morris Katz and Moraff came to the project from worlds far removed from the image they were crafting for the candidates they recruited. Katz grew up in affluent Tribeca in a family of writers, artists and generational wealth built by his great-grandfather. Moraff, meanwhile, was educated at Brown University and Yale Law School and is the grandson of one of the founders of Toys “R” Us.
Rarely far from Moraff was his fiance, Fan, who staffers came to see as an extension of him rather than a check on him. “She is Moraff’s right hand. She is involved in every aspect of the campaign,” a former senior Platner campaign official said, describing the pair as “the ‘mad scientist’ and his trusty sidekick.” Fan did not respond to emailed questions.
Together, they form the tip of the spear of a political theory focused on recruiting unconventional candidates, packaging them as authentic, anti-establishment populist outsiders and betting that their biography and message overcome inexperience.
Before Moraff and Katz found their oyster farmer in Maine, they found a mechanic in Iowa.
Last May, Moraff was hyping to Democratic circles another unknown Senate candidate he’d recruited in nearly identical terms: Nathan Sage, a Marine with a blue-collar biography, raised in a Mason City trailer park, whom Moraff cast in a separate email obtained by Blue Light News as a man “built in a lab to beat Joni Ernst,” Iowa’s junior Republican senator.
“I just haven’t seen any Democrat talk like this guy in… honestly I don’t even know how long,” Moraff gushed about Sage. “This one is really important.”
Like with Platner, the team behind Sage prioritized selling his biography above all else. Morris Katz and other operatives worked closely with him to sharpen his policy language and delivery, honing a blue-collar appeal tailored to the state.
Then Platner took off. And Sage says he was left out in the cold. “He just kind of left me high and dry,” Sage said in an interview about Moraff, while noting he still appreciated the work he did with Morris Katz. “[Moraff] was more caring about Graham and Maine than me, and I wish he would have been around more.”
Sage’s candidacy never caught fire, and he dropped out of the primary in February and endorsed Josh Turek, a state lawmaker who’s now set to face off against Ernst in November. By the time Sage stepped out of the race, the team he felt abandoned by had bigger problems brewing in Maine.
Morris Katz and Moraff declined to answer detailed questions about Sage.
Calls for more vetting ignored
The warning signs in Maine arrived before Platner’s campaign kicked off and went to the very people who would be pushing him as a future president. But in a rush to turn him immediately into the future of the Democratic Party and progressive movement, some of those warning signs were brushed aside.
In the weeks prior to Platner’s launch in August 2025, a research firm hired by his campaign completed a three-day vetting of the candidate that turned up dozens of his Reddit posts, among other problematic material, according to a person who worked on the campaign as well as correspondence reviewed by Blue Light News. The initial findings led the firm to recommend the campaign pay for “on-the-ground research” and a deeper dive into Platner’s digital footprint, warning that his “rising profile” made the discoveries a growing risk to his candidacy, the correspondence shows.
The offer of further research was made only to Moraff, as he was the point of contact for the research firm, the former campaign worker said, with the rest of Platner’s team not included on the email exchanges. But Moraff never responded, despite repeated outreach from the firm, so the offer went unanswered, the correspondence shows.
A few months later, BLN broke the first story about Platner’s cache of Reddit posts, including ones in which he appeared to downplay sexual assault in the military.
Platner apologized for the posts when they surfaced, stating in a video: “I’m sorry for this. Just know that it’s not reflective at all of who I am. I don’t want you to judge me on the dumbest thing I ever wrote on the internet. I would prefer if people could judge me on the person I am today.”
It was the kind of failure that critics say exposes the hollowness at the center of the recruit-an-outsider playbook: The consultants who swept into Maine to build a candidate from scratch never fully learned who their candidate was.
Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former political director who resigned from his campaign in late 2025 over the Reddit controversy, says Katz’s firm shares blame for the vetting failures, too.
“Last fall, when I realized no one had vetted him, I did it myself. @Fight_agency did not give a single fuck what I had to say. You don’t hate them enough,” McDonald wrote in a Saturday post on X.
If anyone at the firm had the experience to catch what was coming, it was Rebecca Katz.
The veteran strategist had spent decades in Democratic politics and years steering marquee insurgent campaigns for figures like John Fetterman and Ruben Gallego — the resume that gave Fight Agency its credibility, and the reason some Platner staffers viewed her as the adult in the room.
But according to three Democratic operatives who worked with Rebecca Katz, she was hesitant about Platner early on and hadn’t been fully aware when Morris Katz initially took him on as a client — leaving the Fight Agency’s biggest, and what turned out to be their riskiest bet in the hands of its youngest star.
And when campaign staff looked to bring concerns to her about the other young operative, Moraff, who had emerged as a de facto campaign manager, they fell on deaf ears.
Ahead of a Platner town hall in Lewiston in October, a senior campaign official wrote to Rebecca Katz’s Fight Agency email seeking to speak in private. “I would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you while you’re here,” reads an early October message reviewed by Blue Light News.
The official spoke with Rebecca Katz and raised concerns about Moraff’s management of the campaign and rumors about improprieties swirling around the candidate, but Katz shut the conversation down and made clear that Moraff had brought Fight Agency into the campaign and her loyalty was to him, according to the official.
“We never spoke again,” the official said. Katz did not comment when asked about the conversation with campaign staff.
Meanwhile, others have come to Fight Agency’s defense, including perhaps most prominently: Mamdani.
“I will continue to work with Morris Katz. He remains a top adviser of mine,” the New York City mayor told reporters Monday when asked whether he planned to cut ties after the Platner scandal — a comment that quickly drew pushback from anti-discrimination advocates.
In Mamdani’s case, Katz got much credit for centering his successful 2025 campaign on a set of easily digestible policy proposals focused on affordability. By contrast, in Platner’s case, Katz and his comrades put intense focus on preserving what it had manufactured — the rugged everyman image — as opposed to ensuring the candidate could survive a rigorous primary and the vetting process.
In a stark example of the Platner team’s optics focus, Platner was the subject of a glowing New Yorker profile during the tumultuous early days of his campaign that said he had purchased his Sullivan home with the help of a Department of Veterans Affairs loan — a detail that fit neatly with the salt-of-the-earth image he projected.
But by the time the story ran, Platner’s campaign had already received a vetting book containing information that conflicted with that account. The file, delivered in late summer 2025 and summarizing the initial three-day vetting of Platner, included mortgage records showing that Platner had bought the home with the help of a $200,000 mortgage from his father, according to a screengrab of the vetting materials reviewed by Blue Light News.
The New Yorker corrected the story months later, after the mortgage records surfaced publicly.
“I don’t want to call them broken toys”
While Platner’s exit was more explosive, consumed by scandal, he and Sage were both recruited and elevated by key figures in the same progressive network just months apart, and in some ways met similar fates.
“There was a story that was being sold,” said a Democratic operative who has worked closely with Fight Agency. “Look, here’s this disaffected young man who went to war, got really messed up, came home, found community, set down roots, got involved locally, became an oysterman, found a way to serve his country again in a different way — that’s a really nice story. But it ignores so many red flags along the way.”
Neither man was looking to run for office, both were plucked from lives they hadn’t planned to leave by out-of-state consultants hunting for a discovery that would make their careers.
“It just feels like they popped him up and then abandoned him,” a Democratic strategist who’s worked with Fight Agency said of Sage. “[He] just seems like a nice guy who probably wasn’t made for this.”
But the demand Platner tapped was real, said Adam Carlson, a Democratic pollster. Voters were clamoring for exactly what the consultants claimed to have found. “He was just the wrong vessel for it,” he said, “because he was deeply, deeply flawed.”
To the strategist who knows the Fight operatives, that’s the risk sitting at the center of their model.
“These people who have never run before…they really seem to be finding almost — I don’t want to call them broken toys, but you know what I mean,” the Democratic strategist said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders says he can’t be everywhere at once — even though some of his allies want him to be.
Democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost by less than 4,000 votes in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary, an outcome several high-profile progressives are blaming on Sanders and other top national progressive leaders for staying out of the race. Some said his endorsement alone could have helped bring in badly needed resources for Hong. Others said the Vermont senator has a responsibility to play widely across the battle map.
Sanders, in an interview, touted a series of progressive wins Tuesday night and brushed off the criticism.
“My response is that we have limited resources and capabilities, and there are a lot of really great candidates who have run for office who we have not endorsed,” Sanders told Blue Light News on Wednesday.
“We can’t endorse every single candidate,” he added. “So, you know, we have to pick and choose and I think that Hong ran a very, very great, and very strong, grassroots campaign, got a lot of people involved and I applaud her for that.”
Hong ultimately lost to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a major victory for establishment Democrats who worried she wouldn’t be able to win a general election in a top battleground. It was a notable blow for the far left that overshadowed progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s win in the Minnesota Senate race the same night.
Sanders and other progressive leaders “have a responsibility, whether they like it or they don’t,” to help steer candidates in the movement, said Cenk Uygur, a progressive activist who co-founded the Young Turks and Justice Democrats. “If they endorse people, it makes a difference. If they don’t endorse people these days, sometimes it makes a bigger difference. Because there’s a certain expectation, and when they don’t deliver on that expectation, it gives people pause. So it feels like, to some degree, they’re shirking their responsibility.”
Uygur also criticized Sanders for saying on a podcast ahead of the primary that he was “not that familiar” with the Wisconsin race.
“I love Bernie, but that’s not true. Sorry, brother, but you have a giant team. Of course somebody on your team knows who’s running for governor in Wisconsin.” Uygur told Blue Light News on Thursday.
One Democratic operative working on progressive campaigns, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the electoral dynamics, also rejected Sanders’ argument, noting the senator won Wisconsin’s presidential primary in 2016.
“He knows Wisconsin very well,” the operative said, adding: “What resources? You’re not cutting checks. [Sanders] endorsing somebody raises the money.”
Sanders in the interview noted primary wins from Flanagan, Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin’s 3rd District and Matt Little in the crowded race for Rep. Angie Craig’s Minnesota seat — all Democrats he endorsed.
“Needless to say, I’m feeling really very good,” Sanders said. “The American people are catching on that we have an economy that is rigged, the very rich are getting richer while working families are struggling.”
But the Wisconsin governor primary result Tuesday exposed a critical vulnerability for a movement that has largely relied on Sanders and a handful of other headline-grabbing stars, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), to help seal the deal in contentious races as progressives look to prove they can play in competitive seats. The underdog wing of the party, some progressives argue, can’t be selective about where it’s playing if they want to take on a vast and well-funded establishment.
The bulk of the blame is being laid at Sanders’ feet in part because the movement he turbocharged in 2016 has struggled to land on a clear successor. Some progressives argue there’s an overreliance on Sanders and leaders such as Ocasio-Cortez.
Our Revolution, a group born from Sanders’ 2016 campaign but that the senator no longer associates with, blasted the broader progressive ecosystem for not doing more for Hong in a post early Wednesday morning, as the returns in Wisconsin showed Crowley was poised to defeat Hong. Several groups that have backed insurgent progressives in other races declined to join Our Revolution in getting involved in the governor’s race.“We cannot build progressive power while gatekeeping our own movement through the eyes of the establishment,” the group posted.
Sanders pushed back: “Our Revolution is an organization I’ve not had any interaction with, any participation with … for I think nine years,” he said in response. “They do what they want and they say what they want. They have nothing to do with me.”
Our Revolution declined comment on Sanders’ remarks and on its post.
Nina Turner, a former Our Revolution leader and Sanders 2020 co-chair who had backed Hong, said support from “more well-known, more popular, actively elected progressive types … probably would have” made a difference in Hong’s race. She declined to call anyone out specifically for not getting involved.
“The progressive movement is going to have to reckon with how we continue to win around certain personalities,” Turner said. “I don’t think the movement should put all our hopes and dreams on certain personalities to come out or to not come out, because it is their choice and they have a right to their choice, even if I don’t agree with it.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was one of the few national progressive figures who had endorsed Hong. He has employed a far more aggressive endorsement strategy than Sanders this primary season and said he sees an advantage to backing candidates early, despite the potential headwinds facing long-shot contenders, as long as they align with him on policy.
But he wasn’t willing to play the blame game in the aftermath of Wisconsin’s primary, saying in a text message that: “We have so many candidates running and I believe progressive leaders have been doing an extraordinary job lifting them up.”
A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez, who has also faced criticism for not backing for Hong, declined to comment.
Not everyone on the left believes Sanders and other progressive stars could have swung a race in which several other factors were working against Hong. The candidate did very little traditional advertising. She faced a barrage of negative press over controversial past social media comments that put her on defense over everything from public safety to Thanksgiving. Several candidates likely siphoned away votes from both Hong and Crowley — including two who dropped out after voting began: Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.
Dillon Sheehan, the chapter secretary for the Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America, which endorsed Hong, said “it’s entirely possible” big-name progressives like Sanders could have “put her over the edge.”
But “we need candidates who can win without Bernie’s endorsement, he’s not going to be able to endorse forever,” Sheehan said. “I think what this shows is that even without his endorsement, without Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement, [Hong] did fantastic.”
David Crowley has a strategy to win over the voters who backed democratic socialist Francesca Hong on Tuesday: make the governor’s race an existential fight against “MAGA extremism.”
Wisconsin Democrats have spent the past day scrambling to unite the far left and centrist factions of the party after a bitter primary battle defined by questions of electability and how far left of an ideology to pursue. The same is happening in Michigan, where the party has just three months to mend broken fences and get progressive Abdul El-Sayed elected in another competitive state this November.
Crowley told Blue Light News he plans to use GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany and President Donald Trump as the foils that bring everyone together.
“We’re not all going to agree on everything. But I think we agree that the ultimate goal is making sure that we don’t have a MAGA extremist and congressman Tom Tiffany sitting in the governor’s office,” Crowley said in an interview Thursday, adding that the state “has a grand opportunity in putting some level of check on Trump’s agenda” amid the “affordability crisis.”
Democrats view holding onto the governor’s mansion in Wisconsin — a top battleground state that Trump won by just shy of 30,000 votes in 2024 — as critical for acting as a bulwark against Trump. They’re hoping to secure a governing trifecta in the state for the first time since 2010.
Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive who was hand-picked by current Gov. Tony Evers, said he plans to not only fold in the left flank, but also reach out to independents and previous GOP voters who “feel rejected by this current Republican party.” Evers himself ousted GOP then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2018 thanks to a coalition that cut across Democratic strongholds, independents and some Republican-leaning voters.
Crowley also said he’s already talked to “some Republicans who are more interested in defeating Tom Tiffany.”
Trump’s approval rating has been continually slipping, and Crowley’s advisers believe focusing on the cost of living under the Trump administration amid an unpopular Iran war is a sweet spot to hit a broad cross-section of voters.
But even as he committed to reaching out to voters who had backed Hong, Crowley told Blue Light News he would not campaign with some of her top surrogates on the trail — and demurred when asked whether he’d bring on any Hong allies to staff his general election campaign, saying everyone is “welcome” at the table.
When asked whether he would campaign with controversial, leftist social media influencer Hasan Piker, Crowley responded: “No.”
“I don’t know Hasan, but I always want to be focused on Wisconsin voters,” he added.
Hong has committed to hitting the trail with Crowley ahead of November, but many of his allies see her as too much of a political liability to be directly involved. They’re worried her brand of democratic socialism — and past controversial social media posts about defunding the police and canceling Thanksgiving — could affect Crowley’s wider appeal.Crowley also isn’t budging on a key campaign policy issue that divided the primary: He will not embrace the moratorium on data center development that Hong ran on.
“No moratorium,” Crowley said in the interview, adding he and Hong do agree on adding “guardrails” on data center development and operation via a package of legislation.
“I let folks know exactly where I stood on data centers,” he said. “That’s why we were able to not only consolidate many of those undecided voters, but get many rural communities to support us as well, because we have a common-sense approach to make sure that we’re protecting our environment, protecting our water, and protecting ourselves … when it comes down to these data centers.”
Former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who dropped out of the race last month amid sexual assault allegations, was announced as a speaker for a Labor Day event in Ellsworth, Maine, next month.
The event was organized by the groups Hancock County Activists and Acadia Action Peacemakers, according to information shared with the Hancock County Democratic Party. Both have been behind “No Kings” protests and other organized events in the area since the start of last year. Neither responded immediately to inquiries about the event on Thursday.
Platner, who is from nearby Sullivan, Maine, dropped out of the Senate race following a July Blue Light News report that a woman he dated accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2021. Platner denied the allegation.
Marcia Myers, the chair of the Hancock County Democratic Party, said the event set to feature Platner was not a sanctioned party event but that the party often shares information about activist-led events in the area. The county party’s Facebook and Instagram posts mentioning Platner’s event were deleted, though the event was still listed on the party’s website.
Platner did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the event on Thursday.
Platner was replaced in the Senate race by former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, as Democrats are seeking to take on GOP Sen. Susan Collins in an election of high importance to both parties nationally.
Outside groups supporting Collins have sought to tie Jackson to Platner, noting Jackson, who previously ran for governor, endorsed Platner’s campaign and appeared at rallies for him. Jackson called for Platner to drop out of the race after the sexual assault allegation.
Jalen Beckford contributed to this story.
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