At 26, Morris Katz has already served as lead media strategist on New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, which harnessed social media to unprecedented success. In 2025, he joined a number of other young upstarts at Fight Agency, which has helped win more than 300 elections.
What’s been the hardest part of your career so far?
Having to sacrifice personal life and family for horrible hours, and never feeling like I can disconnect.
What’s your biggest vice? Your greatest virtue?
Zyns, and humility.
What keeps you up at night?
The idea that my enemies are working harder than me.
What are you looking forward to this year?
A Democratic Senate majority that actually has the backbone to fight for working people—and also a Knicks championship.
What would you wear to meet your greatest enemy?
I had the privilege of wearing a J. Crew suit to the debate where I met disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
What grounds you, and what invigorates you?
My younger brothers who relentlessly mock me, and my colleagues who are sick of reading about me.
What would you like the headline of your obituary to be?
Hopefully, it has something to do with being of old age and not having burned out young.
What would you be doing if you weren’t working in your field?
Starting shooting guard for the Knicks. Or screenwriting, but I couldn’t break the rotation.
When’s the last time you laughed hysterically?
When I found out I was on this list.
Name an influence of yours that might surprise people.
Steve Bannon. He doesn’t view his role in politics as just a gun for hire, but rather as a responsibility to enact a new order and fundamentally change who has power.
What question do you ask yourself most often while you’re making work?
How can I find just a little bit of something magical?
What do you think is your biggest contribution to culture?
Understanding that politics can exist as part of it, too.
What’s one work of art that got you through an important moment in your life?
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.
What’s something people get wrong about you?
My age.
When you were little, what were you known for?
Never sleeping.
What do you want to see more of in your industry? Less of?
Less old people, more creativity and principle.
Where do you feel most at home?
The Angelika.
Who do you call the most?
Rebecca Katz (no relation) or my mom (relation).
To read more from the 2026 CULT100 honorees, see the full list here.
in your life?
