Anna Kaplan, former state senator, will challenge Santos

By LAURA LANE & WILL SHEELINE of the Oyster Bay Herald

It’s official: Republican U.S. Rep. George Santos has another potential challenger. Former Democratic State Sen. Anna Kaplan filed a statement of candidacy on Monday with the Federal Election Commission to challenge Santos in 2024 to represent the 3rd Congressional District, which includes the North Shore and parts of Queens.

Kaplan joins two other Democrats, Nassau County Legislator Josh Lafazan and St. John’s University law professor Will Mur- phy.

Kellen Curry, a Republican, announced his candidacy on April 4. A veteran who was a military officer in Afghanistan, Curry is a former vice president of JP Morgan.

Kaplan, 57, was born in Tabri, Iran, in 1965 to Jewish parents, and was raised in Tehran for 13 years before fleeing the country’s religious persecution after the Islamic Revolution. She spent several years in Brooklyn, Chicago and Queens until her family settled in Great Neck.

Kaplan studied to be an attorney, attending Stern College at

Yeshiva University in New York, and received a law degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. After working as a lawyer for several years, she married her husband, Darren, in

1995, and the couple moved to North Hempstead, where they raised two daughters.

Kaplan spent four years as a library trustee before being selected for the North Hempstead Board of Zoning Appeals in 2009, a position she held for two years. In her first major political race, in 2011, she ran for a seat on the North Hemp- stead Town Council, which she won. She was re-elected in 2015 with 67 percent of the vote.

Then, in 2018, Kaplan decided to run to represent the 7th Congressional District, which at the time did not include the North Shore. Endorsed by President Barack Obama, Kaplan became the first Iranian-American CONTINUED ON PAGE 7