Inna Vernikov, pro-Trump GOP candidate, has shot to win NYC Council

A pro-Trump Republican candidate who opposes COVID-19 vaccine mandates has a real chance of winning a City Council seat in southern Brooklyn, according to political sources in the borough.

Candidate Inna Vernikov — a 37-year-old lawyer and Jewish Ukrainian native — is running against Democrat Steve Saperstein.

The candidates for the 48th Council District are vying to succeed ex-Councilman Chaim Deutsch, who forfeited his seat earlier this year after getting convicted of tax fraud.

The district includes many Russian-speaking and Jewish immigrants in the communities of Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Sheepshead Bay and Homecrest.

Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans in the district — but voter registration is deceiving.

Donald Trump trounced Joe Biden in the district in last year’s presidential race, which means droves of moderate-to-conservative crossed over to back the GOP incumbent.

“This is a very competitive race. This is an area of Brooklyn where Donald Trump did extremely well,” said a veteran Brooklyn Democrat who knows the district well.

The source said Vernikov could catch fire with Russian-speaking voters.

In one of the quirks in the race, Vernikov is a Democrat-turned-Republican, while Saperstein ran for council as a Republican in 2017 and then re-enrolled as a Democrat.

He previously grabbed headlines when he suggested that disgraced lawmakers convicted of corruption should be paraded in handcuffs through their home districts.

A staunch champion of Israel, Vernikov said she would fight to restore funding to the NYPD and back merit-based education and school choice — including prodding Albany to pass a state law to lift the cap that prevents the opening of charter schools. She also would seek to ban placing homeless shelters near schools.

Vernikov did not shy away from her support of Trump in last year’s presidential race when recently talking to The Post.

“I did vote for Trump. He was the best president we’ve had for Israel and the Jews,” she said.

She is supported by former Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a conservative Democrat who she previously worked for and who often supports Republicans and is respected by a large number of Orthodox Jewish voters in southern Brooklyn.

She said she wants to be a voice against the left-wing of the Democratic Party, which for example opposed the congressional bill to help fund Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system to protect the Mideast country from attacks. Vernikov called the growing opposition to the Jewish state among Democrats…