Never Forget: The Trust-Fund Wunderkinds Who Enabled Platner's Rise

Graham Platner, the accused rapist with a Nazi tattoo running for Senate in Maine, has reportedly told staff he will formally end his campaign on Monday—the deadline for Democrats to replace him on the ballot. Given his tendency to lie about every aspect of his life, it's anyone's guess whether Platner will actually go through with it.

In the meantime, we are compelled to draw attention to Morris Katz and Daniel Moraff, the trust-fund wunderkinds responsible for Platner's rise. Until this week, they were widely regarded as cerebral prodigies who could reshape the Democratic Party. The liberal media swooned in unison, taken by their youthful swagger.  Some of the details will sound made up, but they are not. These people really are that weird.

Morris Katz

Katz, 27, became a bona fide Beltway celebrity after helping Zohran Mamdani defeat a profoundly unpopular sex pest in the New York City mayoral election. He helped recruit Platner to run in Maine, and made a slickly produced launch video of the unemployed business owner cosplaying as a working-class everyman.

"Like Mr. Mamdani, Mr. Katz is a child of the New York cultural elite, but is fluent in the anti-elite language of progressive populism," the New York Times wrote earlier this year in a profile headlined, "He's 26 and Ready to Fix the Democrats' Strategy."

Like Platner, Katz is a child of privilege who abhors capitalism, functioning societies, and opponents of terrorism. His great-grandfather "made a fortune in hosiery," the Times reports. His grandfather, Harry Jay Katz, was a notorious libertine described as a "playboy prince of darkness" with a "multi-million dollar trust fund." He claimed to have slept with 4,000 women, and ran a vanity publication whose poetry editor, Ira Einhorn, would go on to be known as the "Unicorn Killer" after murdering his ex-girlfriend in 1977.

The wunderkind's father, David Bar Katz, is an award-winning playwright best known for finding Philip Seymour Hoffman's dead body and suing the National Enquirer for suggesting he and Hoffman were gay lovers. He is a longtime collaborator of John Leguizamo, the obnoxious left-wing activist and Hollywood actor who voiced Antony Snootley in Zootopia 2.

Katz's mother, Julie Merberg, is a prolific author of left-wing picture books for preschool-age children. Popular titles include: My First Book of Feminism, My First Book of Feminism (For Boys), Diversity Is a Superpower, and No!: My First Book of Protest. In 2020, Katz followed in his mother's footsteps by writing an illustrated guide to puberty for "curious boys." The book includes a footnote explaining that Katz's publisher rejected the author's idea of using "images of my penis" instead of cartoon drawings.

Mamdani has described Katz, who cofounded the political consulting firm Fight Agency in 2024, as a "close friend" and confidant who "possesses the combination of ruthlessness and principle that’s all too rare" in politics. The ruthlessness was certainly on display several weeks ago when Katz threatened a former Platner aide in an attempt to forestall an article about the candidate's extramarital sexting on Kik, a hookup app described as a "paradise" for child predators.

Katz reportedly viewed Platner as a future presidential candidate who could win the party's nomination as early as 2028. Given the trajectory of the Democratic Party, it's still too early to rule that out. Katz thought Platner would be a better successor to Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), in part because he's a man.

In recent days, Katz has sought to distance himself from the poorly vetted candidate. He claims to have advised Platner to drop out "as soon as the team became aware" that Jenny Racicot, a woman the candidate dated in 2021, had accused him of rape. According to CNN's Jake Tapper, the campaign's immediate response to Racicot's accusation was to accuse her of lying.

Daniel Moraff 

A left-wing activist with degrees from Brown and Yale, Moraff is the "mad scientist" who helped recruit Platner because he wanted Democrats to nominate "real human beings" who oppose Israel and capitalism. He is the grandson of Seymour Ginsburg, who founded the predecessor to Toys "R" Us and served as the toy chain's first president.

Given his pampered background, it is unclear what qualifies Moraff to assess whether or not someone is a "real human being." There is also the glaring issue of his voice—an effete, insufferable whine rarely encountered beyond the (decidedly inhuman) confines of elite graduate schools. It shouldn't be legal to sound like that.

Moraff, 34, reportedly likened Platner to Barack Obama in the early days of the campaign, and didn't bother to subject the candidate to a normal vetting process—an ill-advised decision, in retrospect. Along with his business partner and fiancée, Leanne Fan, Moraff was convinced that Platner was a "historic figure" destined to lead a "revolution."

New York Times columnist Matthew Yglesias praised Moraff as a "new force in politics specializing in populist outsiders," and noted the contrast between his "quiet and unassuming" demeanor and Platner's "bombastic" charisma. "Mr. Moraff is not a Democratic insider or a strategist," Yglesias wrote. "He saw a void and moved into it." An unfortunate turn of phrase, in retrospect.

On Friday, we learned that Moraff and Platner had more in common than anyone dared to imagine. While living off his family wealth and "working" on Democratic campaigns in the Pittsburgh area, Moraff developed a reputation as "the most hated staffer in the region."

In 2022, Moraff was banished from congresswoman Summer Lee's (D., Pa.) campaign after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. "None of his current embroilment really surprises me because he doesn't have boundaries with women, nor much of an ethical code," a former Pittsburgh organizer told Payday Report.

Moraff's romantic fortunes appear to have improved since meeting Fan, whose engagement ring "opens up to a tiny comb" that she used to brush his beard.