Zohran Mamdani said on Monday that he will keep working with Morris Katz, even as the 27-year-old adviser faces sharp criticism from Democrats over his role in Graham Platner’s collapsed Senate bid. Mamdani called Katz a top adviser and made clear he is not cutting ties.
The decision matters because Katz is not a peripheral figure. He was one of the leading political consultants behind Platner’s campaign, and he has also been widely credited with helping Mamdani win last year against Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa. That makes the split among Democrats more than a passing argument about one failed race. It is a test of whether a consultant can survive a scandal that has already damaged one campaign and now threatens to shadow another.
Platner withdrew after an ex-girlfriend accused him of rape, an accusation he denied. But the backlash against Katz is not limited to that allegation. Democrats have said he failed to do his due diligence before promoting Platner to party leaders, and some are calling for him to be blacklisted from future political operations. The criticism sharpened after it emerged that Katz and Daniel Moraff ignored multiple requests from their own vetting team to dig deeper into Platner’s past.
The vetting itself has become part of the indictment. Katz and Moraff paid just over $6,000 for a three-day vetting job, a sum that falls far short of what such work usually requires. A process that normally takes weeks and costs tens of thousands of dollars was supposed to surface problems before Platner was elevated. Instead, the campaign moved ahead, and Platner later faced scrutiny not only over the rape accusation but also over deleted Reddit posts, a Nazi-linked tattoo and alleged mistreatment of women.
Katz tried to defend the handling of the collapse after Platner announced his intention to suspend his candidacy. On X, he said that as soon as the team became aware of the rape allegations, it advised Platner to suspend his campaign. That account has done little to quiet critics, especially after the Democratic Socialists of America circulated a letter urging political allies not to work with him.
The letter described Katz as “one of the chief parties responsible for the catastrophic campaign of scandal-ridden Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner” and said he helped recruit Platner and “supercharged his candidacy with slick video production, friendly media placements and political connections.” Democratic sources also said Katz pitched Platner as a possible successor to an elderly Bernie Sanders and as a potential presidential contender, a reminder of how aggressively the campaign was sold before it unraveled.
For now, Mamdani is standing by him. The open question is whether the criticism stays at the level of public anger or turns into something more concrete in Democratic circles, because the calls to isolate Katz are growing even as one of his most prominent allies refuses to let go.
