DSA members urge candidates to cut ties with consultant Morris Katz

A letter circulating among Democratic Socialists of America members pressed candidates and elected officials to cut ties with Morris Katz, a consultant for Graham Platner and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. By Friday afternoon, the letter had drawn more than 500 signatures and called on the left to “no longer contract or work with Morris Katz or Fight Agency, his political consulting firm.”

The dispute grew out of Platner’s aborted Maine Senate campaign, which ended on July 8 after a detailed sexual assault allegation and a wave of scrutiny over his campaign and personal history. Platner also faced questions about a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol and allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault, which he denied. Mamdani had already joined calls on July 7 for Platner to leave the race, and the Maine Democratic Party said that if Platner withdrew, it would have to choose a replacement by July 27.

DSA members behind the letter argued that Katz helped recruit Platner and kept the campaign alive too long after trouble mounted. Katz, for his part, said the campaign advised Platner to suspend his candidacy as soon as the rape allegations became known and then worked to wind the operation down. The Democratic Socialists of America’s national organization said it had not seen the letter, and Katz is not a member of the group.

The clash has spilled beyond Maine because Fight Agency also works with Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. That has turned the fight into more than a dispute about one consultant or one campaign collapse. It has become a test of how tightly DSA-aligned candidates should police their political orbit, especially when consultants move between overlapping campaigns in New York, Maine and Michigan.

For left-wing activists, the Platner fallout has sharpened an old question about discipline and electability: whether a consultant tied to a failed, scandal-ridden campaign should remain inside the movement’s good graces, or whether the networks that build progressive insurgencies should be cut off when they become liabilities.