Platner Campaign Threatened Female Staffer Who Exposed Sexual Deviancy

An adviser to Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner threatened the female former staffer who went public with Platner’s sexually explicit text messaging habits.

Morris Katz, a strategist for Platner who also advises New York City’s democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, sent a message through a third party to former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, warning her not to cooperate with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal on stories that dug into Platner’s explicit texts to multiple women.

“Just want to be clear on where we are right now,” Katz wrote in the message McDonald first shared with The Bangor Daily News, warning her that she would face a smear campaign if she assisted with the story. “If the story goes in its current iteration we’ll communicate directly on the record, and by name, that Genevieve violated the personal trust of Amy and Graham and shared explicit falsehoods to sabotage the campaign.”

McDonald was working on another campaign for Jordan Wood, also a Democrat, who is running in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District — but she quit over the weekend in an effort to shield Wood from any negative publicity she might get in the aftermath of the Platner stories going to print. The message from Katz was delivered to McDonald through another of Wood’s advisers.

Katz also appeared to lash out at McDonald via an X post, though he did not name her specifically, when the stories were published, saying, “It’s no one’s f*cking business what happened in Graham & Amy’s marriage before he was ever a candidate for office. There should be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust, and prioritize vengeance over decency.”

Platner has been dogged by a number of scandals throughout his campaign, from the discovery of a Nazi-inspired tattoo that he’s since had covered up to his Reddit posts trashing a wounded veteran and Purple Heart recipient. The sexually explicit texts — to which his campaign has admitted — and his still-active profile on predators’ paradise Kik were only the latest wrinkles in his very bumpy campaign.