Representative Lauren Arikan Contact information

Lauren Arikan, born on December 14, 1984, is a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates. She was born in Ellicott City, Maryland and is a member of the Turkish-American community. She attended McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland and the University of Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland.

Since 2009, she has worked at her family’s businesses, Arikan Accounting and Tax, Arikan Acres, and Arikan Investments. She lives on an eight-acre chicken and dairy goat farm in Jarrettsville, Maryland with her husband, Yusuf, and their four children.

Arikan first got involved in politics in 2012 by becoming a member of the Board of Directors for the Maryland Friends of Midwives organization. From 2015 to 2018, she served as the chair of the Love Maryland PAC. In February 2018, Arikan filed to run for the Maryland House of Delegates in District 7. She won the Republican primary and defeated Democrats Allison Berkowitz and Gordon Koerner and Green Party candidate Ryan Sullivan in the general election.

Arikan was sworn into the Maryland House of Delegates on January 9, 2019. She was assigned to the Judiciary Committee by House Speaker Michael E. Busch. In 2021, she was elected to serve as vice president of the Women Legislators of Maryland caucus. She left the caucus in 2022 after its members voted to elect Delegate Lesley Lopez as its new president over Arikan, who was in line to become its next president.

In August 2021, Arikan filed a complaint with the Maryland State Board of Elections against Michael Steele, who had formed a 527 committee to raise money for his exploratory effort in the 2022 gubernatorial election. Steele’s campaign dismissed these allegations, calling them “completely meritless” and accusing Arikan of supporting Dan Cox in the Republican primary. Arikan denied these claims, saying that she intended to stay “completely out of the gubernatorial Republican primary”.

In March 2022, Arikan proposed an amendment to abortion rights legislation that would ban abortion services based on the gender of the fetus. She previously represented the 7th district from 2019 to 2023, afterwards being redrawn into district 7B.