The veteran who trained elite pilots in Afghanistan – and is now taking on lying George Santos

Even after the scandalous unraveling of one-time freshman GOP star George Santos, at least one Republican is daring to try and hold on to the seat for his party.

Kellen Curry, an Afghanistan war veteran and former Wall Street banker, said he had two moments of reckoning that led him to run for New York’s third congressional seat: the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the revelations that Santos’ completely defrauded the American public’. ‘

“I had an incredibly powerful experience there, serving alongside allies and having teammates who unfortunately didn’t come home,” Curry told DailyMail.com in an interview.

“When I saw the disastrous withdrawal – Afghans clinging to planes and the 13 Marines killed, I just felt that we deserve leaders in our national legislature who are a reflection of the service and sacrifice of myself and so many others holding the uniform.’

“Santos was not a reflection of that caliber,” he continued.

Santos was the first openly gay House GOP member and one of four to flip a blue chair in New York’s own “red wave.”

Now he’s the conference con artist, staring at a 13-count federal indictment with up to 20 years in prison.

When asked about the Santos lie that most outraged him, Curry pointed to a claim that Santos stole $3,000 he raised for life-saving surgery for a homeless Navy veteran’s cancer-stricken dog.

After setting up a GoFundMe, Santos would never have handed over the money and the dog died.

While five are already vying to defeat Santos on the Democratic side, Curry is the only GOP primary challenger to the indicted congressman.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said he will not support Santos’ re-election, as New York State and local parties have done.

As for the support he’s received, “a lot of people are certainly intrigued,” Curry said.

“I’ve had some good conversations, both in DC, in the district and in the state,” he continued. ‘It’s still early. I think people are right to want us to do our homework this time.”

House Republicans voted on Wednesday to reject a Democrat-led resolution to return Santos to the Ethics Committee — where an investigation could find that a full vote in the House is needed to clear the congressman to turn off.

The speaker is stuck between needing Santos’ voice in the narrowly divided conference and accepting the damage Santos has done to the conference’s reputation.

If Santos were evicted, his seat would stand open until a special election could determine the winner. That district is rated as a “lean Democrat” by Cook Political Report.

“We believe I would be the best candidate in this race, and we would welcome Mr. McCarthy’s support,” said Curry.

Curry grew up on an Oklahoma air base and made it to third place in New York via a career on Wall Street as a banker at JP Morgan.

“I think a Republican can win this seat. It’s a 50/50 district, a Republican with the right message, that is,” Curry said.

He said he thought his service and finance background would be a good fit for New York City’s suburban district — the country’s fourth-richest district.

“Some of the voters here resonate with coming in and out of town and working in the financial services industry. And then there are some natural constituencies in the districts, like the Merchant Marine Academy. Their alumni have been very supportive so far.

“Then it works with small businesses — when I was in the military, I did: I was a procurement and contract guy who worked with businesses.”

Curry was attached to an Afghan military unit called the Special Mission Wing, training the offensive operations of the Taliban and ISIS-K, the pilots who quickly collapsed for the Taliban as the US retreated.

Curry insists the Biden administration ignored the advice of its top generals to follow the political winds.

“It was driven by domestic politics and not coming out to convey to the American people why it was important to maintain a residual force, which was the recommendation of some of our generals.”

Curry said all the blame was not on Biden, as previous administrations had equipped the Afghans with technology too advanced for them to maintain alone.

“The Afghans became too dependent on US troops, but that was something the Biden administration should have recognized that if we bowed immediately, things would collapse the way they did.”

At the time, Biden expressed frustration that the Afghan forces were falling as quickly as they did – insisting they hadn’t wanted to fight – even though they lost some 66,000 over the course of 20 years of fighting.

“US troops cannot and should not fight in a war, and die in a war that the Afghan forces do not want to fight for themselves,” Biden said at the time.

He also insisted that he was bound by a Trump-era peace deal with the Taliban that promised all troops to leave.

“They’re using the Trump years as a pretext for their own failure to look around the corner and move and rise above domestic politics and make decisions beyond domestic politics,” Curry said.

Curry is confident he can win his own race by ‘sticking to the trouble’ and keeping it local, following wall-to-wall media coverage of Santos, the 34-year-old freshman whose never-ending lies stayed under the radar until the election.

“When I go around the precinct, people are — they get the whole Santos thing and they’re kind of tired of talking about it.”

“Right now we have the most ineffective member of Congress,” Curry added.

“So what people want to hear is what affects them on a daily basis – we talk about things like getting to the gold standard or constituency services. We talk about things like restoring funding to the Merchant Marine Academy so we can rebuild the campus. We talk about what federal resources we think we can allocate to our public schools to improve mental health care for our youth. We’re talking about lowering the cost of living on Long Island.”

He said his goal is to restore confidence in politics.

“It’s about communicating to people that we have something to fight for. It’s getting so down and so cynical about our politics,” the candidate said.

“If you think about it, people are pouring across the border into this country right now to participate in the American dream. And so we still have something to fight for. We still have a country worth saving.’

Curry and Santos will run head-to-head in a June 2024 primary — if the current congressman lasts that long without being evicted.

On the left, Zak Malamad, the founder of Next 50, a group that raises money for candidates under the age of 50, Will Murphy, an attorney and professor focused on recovering from SALT deductions and gun reform, Josh Lafazan, a member of the Nassau County Legislature and Anna Kaplan, a former state senator, have all announced plans for the district.