Platner’s Top Campaign Strategist on What Went Wrong
About this episode
What went wrong with Graham Platner's Maine Senate campaign? Katz — a strategist at the Fight Agency, the ad maker behind Fetterman's 2022 campaign, and a key figure in Zohran Mamdani's New York City mayoral win — recounts recruiting Platner, an oyster farmer and veteran, to challenge Maine's establishment. The campaign imploded after credible accusations of abuse against Platner and the surfacing of his 2013 Reddit posts and a Nazi-linked tattoo. Katz admits the vetting was inadequate and that the Reddit posts should have been a 'red line,' while noting 'Fight is not a vetting agency.' The conversation widens into his theory of the case: Democrats need populist outsiders who 'name villains' on affordability, a real big tent, and candidates with working-class credibility. They discuss Mamdani's vertical-video campaign style, the collapse of local media and unions as candidate pipelines, and the stakes: Democrats must prove government can work.