Councilwoman Anna Kaplan Announces Bid for Re-election
January 29, 2015, Washington, D.C. – Councilwoman Anna “Monahemi” Kaplan – representative for the 4th District Town of North Hempstead, New York – has announced her plans to run for re-election in November 2015.
Kaplan became the first Iranian American to be elected to Municipal Office in the state of New York in 2011. Following her election, she was profiled by the Lifetime Network as part of their “Remarkable Women” campaign, which honors women who inspire and empower others to make a difference in their communities and the world.
Kaplan is running on her record as being a hard-working and well-prepared councilmember. She focused her first term on bringing state allocated funds to the town of North Hempstead, and is currently working on two projects to bring affordable housing for seniors to her district.
“One of the many issues I hope to continue working on is affordable senior housing,” Kaplan told PAAIA. “We have an innovative Town program to allow seniors to age in places called “Project Independence,” but many of our seniors simply can’t afford to remain in their homes in the Town. I’ve got two large projects in the works that will begin to address this problem through a partnership of private developers and public state funds that will create over one hundred new units for seniors with annual incomes of less than $65,000.”
An immigrant herself, Kaplan remarked that she receives a great deal of support from immigrant communities and new U.S. citizens in her district. “One of the most moving things I heard during my last campaign was people who told me that they registered to vote for the first time just so that they could vote for me—that’s an unbelievably humbling thing to hear,” Kaplan told PAAIA.
Born in Tabriz and raised in Tehran, Kaplan was sent to the United States at the age of twelve as part of an international effort to help Jewish children leave Iran following the 1979 revolution. After attending high school in Chicago, she received a B.S. in Biology at Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University and later earned a J.D. from Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.
Kaplan has resided in the Town of North Hempstead for more than twenty years, serving on both the Great Neck Library Board of Trustees and on the North Hempstead Board of Zoning and Appeals. She currently lives in the Village of Kensington with her husband Darren, and daughters Sarah and Taylor. She is fluent in Farsi, Aramaic and Turkish.
Click here to learn more about Anna Kaplan’s campaign.
