Views AJAX Submit is removing my custom classes
I struggled with this recently in this question

The answer is to wrap your jQuery in a Drupal Behaviour so that the classes are not removed on every ajax request. Because your current jQuery is probably only run on the first page load.

(function($) {
Drupal.behaviors.myBehavior = {
  attach: function (context, settings) {

        // Put your jQuery Code Here

  }
};
})(jQuery);