Kagan was born in Minsk in 1967.[1] His parents were survivors of the Holocaust. His paternal grandmother Sofiya was killed in the Minsk ghetto in 1942 while his father Mikhail survived.[6][7]
After graduating Secondary School No. 20 in Minsk, he joined the Soviet Army and attended Leningrad Suvorov School. In February 1984, he was admitted to the Journalism Department at Lviv Higher Military-Political School, from which he graduated in 1988.[8]
In 2002, he legally changed his name from "Arkadiy" to "Ari" when he became naturalized as a U.S. citizen. In a 2010 interview, Kagan said of the name change: "Firstly, Ari is shorter than Arkadiy, and Americans do not distort my name, and secondly, I like my new name because it resembles the abbreviation of the words "America - Russia - Israel"."[10][3][8]
Career
Journalism
As a military journalist, he worked in Soviet Latvia with the newspapers Sovetskiy Tankist in Dobeleand Dlya Rodiny! in Riga.[2] Kagan said that he was "lucky to work in various papers during the Gorbachev era of Glasnost and Perestroika when criticism of authorities was allowed and sometimes even encouraged".[6] He told TabletMag that "I was not a dissident. But I was honest with myself, with my family, with my readers."[3] After resigning from the Soviet Army in 1991, Kagan worked for anti-Communist papers " Independent Baltic Newspaper" (Riga) and "Byelorussian Enterprener" (Minsk).
In Brooklyn, Kagan worked as a writer for the Russian-language newspapers Yevreiski Mir and Vecherniy New York.[11][12][13][1] He also presented a weekly television program on the Brooklyn-based Russian Television Network of America (RTN).[14] From 2005 till 2021, Kagan hosted morning Radio Show "New York City News" on Russian language Davidzon Radio (620 AM).
Democratic Party politics
In 2012, he was elected as a Democratic District Leader in the 45th New York State Assembly District and founded the political club Bay Democrats in 2014.[15][16] In December 2022, Kagan switched parties from Democratic to Republican in December 2022 and stepped down from his District Leader post.[17][18]
Work for elected officials
Kagan worked as a community liaison for Comptrollers John Liu and Scott Stringer, as an assistant to Congressman Michael McMahon and later as Director of District Operations to Council Member Mark Treyger, before succeeding Treyger in the City Council.[19][20]
After switching his party affiliation to Republican due to his strong disagreements with Democrats on public safety, school education and taxation, Kagan joined the Republican conference in City Council. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams suggested Kagan may lose his position as Chair of the Council's Committee on Resiliency and Waterfronts. "Voters sent Council member Kagan to the Council as a member of the majority conference and this drastic about-face seriously calls into question his commitment to the policy priorities of our conference that will impact his committee roles, particularly his chairmanship given the fact that he is joining a party that denies climate change," Adams said. Kagan resigned from the Committee Chairmanship shortly after, telling the Daily News that "I resigned rather than to wait until being expelled by the Council leadership."[22]
He has announced that he would run for re-election in the newly re-drawn 47th district.[23] The 47th district was heavily panned for one of the most significant gerrymanders in modern NYC politics, connecting Bay Ridge to Coney Island through a 1-block stretch, which included dividing a Coney Island housing complex between two districts.[24]
In 2023, Kagan won the Republican primary but lost to Justin Brannan in the general election.[25][26]
