Good morning and welcome back to the Tip Sheet, a weekly newsletter from Tom Dudchik’s Capitol Report written by Mike Cerulli.

This week, we’re bringing you news out of Josh Elliott’s campaign, which has hired a powerhouse Democratic media firm with strong ties to Zohran Mamdani.

Plus, the Lamont campaign has been polling. What do the results show? A campaign source gave the Tip Sheet some insight.

Finally, we'll offer some reflections on a historic anniversary and the great tradition of broadcast news.

Let’s dive in…

Elliott hires Mamdani-aligned firms for media and polling work

Vanity Fair recently described Morris Katz, a 27-year-old political operative from New York City, as a man on a mission to “overhaul the Democrats with beer, Zyn, and true belief.”

Beer and Zyn, as loyal Tip Sheet readers will know, are two key ingredients in the success of any twentysomething dude on the come up in the cutthroat world of politics (and political journalism). Katz is apparently a fan of menthol ice Zyns.

Now, Katz – with his beer, Zyn, and true belief presumably in tow – will play a role in Josh Elliott’s effort to overthrow Ned Lamont in the Democratic Party’s August primary. Elliott told the Tip Sheet that he’d retained the services of Fight Agency, the media firm where Katz works alongside a bullpen of campaign veterans with a decidedly anti-establishment ethos. Elliott said Katz and Eric Stern, another strategist who helped John Fetterman win an expensive primary in Pennsylvania, will be Fight Agency’s consultants for his campaign.

“We’re gearing up for the next phase,” Elliott said of his new teammates.

Katz is perhaps best known for his work as a key advisor to then-candidate Zohran Mamdani. Fight Agency was the creative force behind some of Mamdani’s most innovative and viral ads, including one that aired during the “Golden Bachelor” in which Mamdani asked New York City voters to accept a rose from him. Katz has also played a major role in the rise of Graham Platner as the leading Democratic candidate in Maine’s Senate race, an association that has led to some scrutiny of Katz in recent weeks as Platner has faced a string of negative headlines.

In addition to Fight Agency, Elliott has also hired Jane Rayburn as his pollster. Rayburn was the pollster for Mamdani’s insurgent victory last year.

Elliott’s hiring of Fight Agency and Rayburn’s polling firm, Benchmark, builds on the ratcheting up of his operation in the weeks since the state party convention, where he secured more than enough support to force a primary with Lamont. His campaign has also brought on a campaign manager, Melissa Murray of Norwalk. Elliott plans to formally file his application for public financing this week. He said he’s built a buffer of around 4% above the required $335,000 mark to qualify and has a team of a dozen supporters double checking his paperwork.

Mamdani’s vanquishing of Andrew Cuomo and triumph over a field with no shortage of political talent has stood as a lodestar for other Democrats seeking to overcome similarly long odds. But while Elliott has offered nothing but praise for the feat Mamdani was able to pull off in the Big Apple, he has actively avoided being branded as “Connecticut’s Mamdani” or some other version of the monikers that have been affixed to progressive primary challengers across the country. The two men might hail from the same wing of their party, and they now have a shared political consultant, but they differ in terms of policy priorities, style, and tone.

The team at Fight Agency seem to have a knack for promoting the unique branding of candidates who align in terms of mission and political narrative, but diverge on tactics and personal branding. Take, for example, the independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn of Nebraska. Katz was a driving force behind Osborn’s surprisingly strong, though ultimately unsuccessful showing in the 2024 election. While Mamdani’s ads played up his swagger and cosmopolitan “nice guy” vibe, Osborn’s campaign emphasized his blue collar roots and his ostensible independence from the two-party system. An ad titled “Weld” featured Osborn, a veteran and union leader, taking a literal torch to attack ads against him while hardcore music played in the background.

Torch or rose, take your pick. Fight Agency seems equally adept at wielding both implements.

It’s unclear how large of a role Katz will play in the day-to-day guidance of Elliott’s campaign given his high-profile work around the country. As David Freedlander recently wrote in his previously-linked New York Magazine article about Katz detractors, the young operative is “approaching the rarefied world of political consultants who become nearly as well known in their field as the politicians they elect.” Freedlander, a preeminent chronicler of New York City politics, drew comparisons to the type of fame that David Axelrod, Karl Rove, and James Carville have achieved.

The presence of an operative like Katz in Connecticut would represent a novel development in the state’s insular political scene, which is currently dominated by homegrown campaign hands and state Capitol lifers. Opposite Fight Agency will be SKDK, the influential Democratic firm tapped by Lamont in his previous re-election and again this year. Lamont and Elliott’s respective choices of consultants illustrate the dynamics of their primary battle: progressive upstarts on one side, establishment heavyweights on the other.

Lamont has new poll numbers. Will they see the light of day?

The Lamont campaign has received polling data from a survey fielded within the last few weeks, sources tell the Tip Sheet.

The campaign doesn’t seem to have made a decision on whether or not to release some of the numbers, as John Larson and Erin Stewart both opted to do. But a senior campaign source says the topline result generally tracks with the overall findings of a poll commissioned by the advocacy group Impact CT and reported by everyone’s favorite Hearst columnist, Dan Haar.

The Impact CT poll found Lamont with a solid overall lead among likely primary voters, 58-20, according to Haar.

Beyond the topline question, Impact CT’s survey recipients were provided with statements about Lamont and Elliott. The statements, which create what pollsters call an “informed ballot,” contained both positive and negative information about each candidate. Asked again about their preference, the incumbent’s advantage narrowed considerably.

Impact CT’s informed ballot results were wildly divided by age. Among those likely voters nearing or beyond the eligibility age to cash a Social Security retirement check, Lamont led 60-19. But those numbers essentially flipped in Elliott’s favor among voters who can name an Olivia Rodrigo song. Two thirds of the under-34 crowd sided with the Hamden lawmaker.

Whether or not the Lamont campaign's message testing yielded results similar to Impact CT's survey is known only to the governor's inner circle. The choice to release portions of internal polling data is always a fraught one. As an incumbent with a paid media operation limited only by time, Lamont’s team may feel no need to grab a day or two of news coverage by selectively presenting their numbers to reporters.

Reflecting on D-Day and the legacy of the journalists who covered it

Scores of movies and television shows have dramatized the events of June 6, 1944. Most are familiar with the harrowing opening scene of “Saving Private Ryan” and history aficionados have likely have watched the miniseries “Band of Brothers,” which dramatized the campaign of American airborne troops who parachuted into occupied France while their comrades took the beaches.

But there are perhaps no more compelling depictions of D-Day than those penned and broadcast by the journalists who went ashore with the soldiers. 82 years later, their words still echo.

Jack Thompson, a Chicago Tribune reporter, landed on Omaha Beach, where American forces took their heaviest casualties. Thompson recalled the ramp of the landing boat lowering and machine gun rounds ripping through the water. He held his typewriter in front of his face as he waded through the surf.

Listening over the sound of explosions and gunfire, Thompson reported the orders of an American colonel to his troops.

“Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beach,”  the colonel said. “Let us go inland and be killed.”

One journalist was killed on D-Day. Ian Fyfe was a Daily Mirror reporter who was just 25 when he volunteered to fly with British paratroopers on a mission similar to the one immortalized in the second episode of “Band of Brothers.” The glider he was flying in crashed somewhere in Normandy, possibly downed by Nazi flak guns, in the hours before the amphibious troops hit the beaches.

Hours after Fyfe’s glider was lost, the legendary photojournalist Robert Capa landed at Omaha Beach and snapped more than 100 photos while under fire. The 11 surviving frames are some of the most well-known images of the entire war.

Charles Collingwood landed on the beach codenamed Utah shortly after the first wave of troops disembarked their landing craft. He recorded a contemporaneous report which was later broadcast to listeners around the world. The report is strikingly calm, with the roar of wind, waves, and artillery punctuating Collingwood’s careful observations of each type of plane and vessel that he saw.

Collingwood was among the crop of young broadcasters known as the "Murrow Boys" who served during the war under the legendary CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow.

Murrow himself was no stranger to combat. He flew two dozen combat missions with Allied air forces as they bombed Nazi targets. The bombing missions flown by American and British air forces were among the most deadly tasks of the entire war. 26,000 American airmen of the “Mighty” Eighth Air Force were killed in action.

One of Murrow’s most famous reports detailed his experience inside a British bomber on a nighttime raid over Berlin. 41 bombers were downed by Nazi guns that evening. One reporter, Norman Stockton, was killed when his plane was shot down. Another journalist went down and was held in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, where he helped start a secret newspaper for other captives.

“There is something of a tradition amongst reporters, that those who are prevented by circumstances from filing their stories will be covered by their colleagues,” Murrow said of his fallen friends in a broadcast following the raid. “This has been my effort to do so.”

Murrow and his circle of colleagues would go on to shape the birth of television news at CBS. But Murrow's dominance at the dawn of the broadcast era was ended in no small part due to his feuding with CBS management. Alarmed by the growing influence of commercial advertising on CBS' news operation, Murrow frequently clashed with company executives, ultimately leading to the cancellation of his show in 1958. In a speech several months later, Murrow warned of the direction American mass media was heading, calling out commercial interests and a tendency to shield viewers from hard truths like the ones he’d reported from the frontlines. If those trends were left unchecked, Murrow said, "History will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us."

In December of 1968, Collingwood, one of CBS' remaining Murrow Boys, contributed reporting to the very first season of a pioneering news magazine show called “60 Minutes.” The show was infused with Murrow’s DNA, pursuing hard-hitting truths with the same fearlessness that the Murrow Boys brought to Normandy. Collingwood’s debut episode featured a report on cheating in the NFL. The league was and remains a lucrative and politically influential business partner of CBS, but the report was nonetheless thorough. The following week, another reporter who had survived the dangerous skies of wartime Europe and followed American troops onto Utah Beach made an appearance on the show. He would go on to become a regular. Decades later, he recounted to the “60 Minutes” audience what he saw when he came ashore after D-Day. 

Andy Rooney's monologue stands as a moving memorial to all those young men who gave their lives 82 years ago in defense of the free world.

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back next week with another edition of the Tip Sheet!