ALBANY – The Republican seeking to unseat Attorney General Letitia James sees a way to win because New Yorkers are “tired of lawlessness” under her watch, she told The Post.
Saritha Komatireddy, a self-proclaimed political outsider who was inspired to serve the community after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, handled cases as a prosecutor for the counter-terrorist organization Al Qaeda and ISIS before a distinguished career as a lawyer, including with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The Manhattan-based mother of four, who was nominated by the GOP last month, said rising and crime-related policies are making it harder and harder to live in the Empire State.
“These things affect innocent people. They affect New Yorkers every day. And I think New Yorkers of all political stripes are just tired of the lawlessness,” Komatireddy, 41, said.
The candidate is a born-and-bred New Yorker, and the daughter of immigrants from India who settled in Coney Island in the 1980s.
After the 9/11 attacks, he was inspired to work in law enforcement. He earned a law degree from Harvard Law and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he sat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
He continued to prosecute terrorist and drug-trafficking cases in the Eastern District of New York. In 2020, President Trump nominated him for a judgeship in the district, although it did not advance before the end of his first term.
He is now a partner at Holzman Vogel.
The prosecutor said he wants to run his campaign around his vision of where the AG’s office gets tough — fighting drug crime, racism and the widespread disregard for law in public places like New York City’s homeless shelters.
He also expressed the need for more scrutiny of the Democrats’ stranglehold on state government itself – pointing to the urgency of ending fraud in Medicaid and other nonprofit social services.
“We have to make sure that the people who take taxpayers’ money to provide services actually provide those services,” he said.
“If we research and investigate all the homeless shelters in the province, we will be able to see who is doing a good job, who is doing a bad job, who is building a safe place and who is not,” said Komatireddy.
He said he would face the misunderstandings fueled by one-party rule and unaccountability.
“Everyone in official position is friends with everyone, and no one is really a check,” said Komatireddy – adding that he would not “understand people by their politics.”
That’s exactly what James accused of doing in his impeachment and conviction of Trump on local charges four years after he left office, before winning a second term in 2024.
Komatireddy said James was wrong to campaign on the basis of prosecuting a political opponent.
“That was wrong. Real prosecutors, they don’t understand people. They direct cases,” he said.
He wouldn’t say Trump’s administration took the same approach when they tried to prosecute James for mortgage fraud for claiming a second home in Virginia was the first residence on the books.
“I will trust the lawyers of the Department of Justice to do the right thing in that case,” he said, noting that he had “not looked at the file” in the James case.
But Komatireddy said he also won’t take a premeditated or “knee-jerk” approach to dealing with the federal government under Trump if he eventually releases James.
“I don’t want to make decisions based on politics. I won’t be knee-jerk in anything,” he said.
James, 67, played a key role in many of the cases against Trump in the first year of his second term. These include several aimed at forcing the federal government to stop funding major federal projects such as the Gateway Tunnel and the Second Avenue Subway.
The political newcomer faces an uphill battle against James, a left-wing darling who took over as AG in 2019 after Eric Schneiderman resigned. No Republican has served as AG since Dennis Vacco left office in 1998.
No Republican has won statewide in New York since former Governor George Pataki won a third term in 2002.
Democrats now represent 48% of registered voters in the state while Republicans represent 22%. Another 25% of registered voters do not have membership, according to the latest figures from the Board of Elections.
Komatireddy said he is confident he has a message of safety and the public should be affected enough to get his attention before November.
Komatireddy’s gravitas for the party’s endorsement changed dramatically earlier this year after 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidate Michael Henry withdrew his bid to return.
Komatireddy ended up defeating Khurram Dara, an advocate from the cryptocurrency industry, in the GOP nomination and the Republican convention in Long Island last month.
