Make New York Post a Preferred Source Republican attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy holding a press conference next to a homeless encampment in Manhattan on Sept. 22, 2026. Matthew McDermott for NY Post Saritha Komatireddy was a freshman in her first week at Harvard University when terrorists struck New York. She resolved, on 9/11, to become a prosecutor to protect her country and hometown. She’s been doing it ever since.
As an Assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, she took down terrorists, cartel members and cybercriminals, forging a reputation so impressive that she was named chief of staff of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the back half of the Biden administration, right as it finally began to take the porous southern border seriously.
Now a 41-year-old mother to two sets of twins under the age of 10 living in Manhattan, she’s mounting an insurgent statewide campaign against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“We’ve had a member of my family assaulted in the subway, taking my kids to school. We have a family friend who had a stray bullet come through her bedroom while she was sleeping,” Komatireddy told The Post.
“New Yorkers don’t feel safe, they feel less safe now than when Tish James began as attorney general and the reason is simple: they are less safe now.
Those are the weighty charges Komatireddy is leveling against James, who is something of a celebrity on the left thanks to her overblown civil lawsuit against Donald Trump.
But while the AG’s pursuit of hyper-partisan vanity projects endeared her to her fellow professional Democrats and the media, Komatireddy believes that the public sees them for what they are: a distraction from her core duties.
“For the last eight years, we’ve had an attorney general who is more focused on national politics and burnishing her own brand and celebrity, and that has not served New Yorkers,” says the Republican nominee for James’ office. “We’re all less safe because of it. She’s neglected New York.”
Saritha Komatireddy, running for New York Attorney General, poses with her family. Saritha Komatireddy/Instagram Confronted by a local news anchor with Komatireddy’s criticism of her “neglect” of criminal issues, James insisted that the Columbia Law School professor and Holtzman Vogel partner “doesn’t understand the responsibility and the role of the New York State attorney general.”
“Our office primarily focuses on civil investigations, and not criminal investigations. In order to engage in a criminal investigation, you would need a referral from the governor of the state of New York.”
It’s an empty answer, and one Komatireddy plans to dismantle when they debate Thursday evening.
On hate crimes: which have skyrocketed on James’ watch: “The AG has jurisdiction to step in when a district attorney fails to prosecute a case appropriately,” Komatireddy says.
On retail theft rings: “That is the very definition of organized crime. Under New York State law, we have an organized crime task force in the attorney general’s office for the specific purpose of prosecuting organized crime.”
On aiding shorthanded district attorneys’ offices: “The New York Court of Appeals has held that the attorney general can send attorneys from her own office to the DAs’ offices and designate them as special ADAs so that they can help out.”
“There are numerous ways an attorney general can prosecute crime, you just have to want to do it,” Komatireddy told The Post.
“Our problem right now is not a lack of resources or a lack of authority. Tish James just doesn’t want to do it.”
You don’t have to take her word for it either.
James is a bail reform truther more worried about “overreact[ing] to spikes in crime” than reacting to them, and more interested in investigating cops than criminals.
Her lethargic brand of leadership isn’t just a product of laziness, it’s her naive worldview put into practice.
On homelessness, too, her “can do” attitude makes for a sharp contrast with James’ shrugs.
Komatireddy is proposing the establishment of an Office of Civil Commitment to get severely mentally ill people off the streets and into treatment centers.
James has derided her plan, complaining that “She wants to go backwards to the time when individuals who were struggling with mental illness were out of mind, and out of sight, and locked away.”
That’s a cute — if wildly demagogic — canned line, but it’s cold comfort to the family of Erin Piacenti, the new mother stabbed to death in Times Square on August 31.
Or that of Mesias Lojano, the 59-year-old man murdered on the J train last Wednesday.
Or those who loved Ross Falzone, a retired 76-year-old special education teacher who passed after being shoved down a staircase in May.
“Having severely mentally ill individuals out on the streets, in the subways, is unsafe for the individual themselves and unsafe for the community,” argued Komatireddy. “It’s a public safety crisis, it’s also a humanitarian crisis.”
“Tish James wants to do nothing and leave things just the way they are. That’s who’s going backwards, that’s cruel.”
The disturbing “Cornell 7” story dominating headlines across the country makes for still another case study in James’ propensity toward political stunts and sloppy mistakes.
Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed James to replace the Tompkins County district attorney as the lead prosecutor in the criminal investigation into the alleged incident.
But James has already betrayed her prejudice in the case, declaring that what Jane Doe had “been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable.”
Her commentary, though, has already disserved the alleged victim, the suspects and the public at large.
However this sad episode ends will be the subject of continued controversy thanks to her big mouth.
The blunder is reflective of recurring character flaws that the 67-year-old isn’t likely to kick anytime soon, and that Komatireddy doesn’t have to.
“Sexual assault is one of the most serious crimes that anyone can experience,” she told The Post. “It’s just awful, and cases like that have to be handled with seriousness, with care… Cases like that have to be handled by serious prosecutors, and it’s unfortunate because Letitia James isn’t a prosecutor.”
“You know, I personally investigated and prosecuted cases of sexual assault. I did it fairly, impartially, with integrity. I never pulled my punches, I never pled those cases down, I prosecuted them to the fullest extent of the law,” continued Komatireddy. “I prosecuted them based on the facts and the law, not based on press coverage or politics. That’s what you need to do to run an investigation and prosecution with integrity in a way that everyone involved can trust and have confidence in.”
There’s little doubt that the challenger is the prohibitive underdog against the incumbent.
Republicans face significant headwinds nationally, let alone in deep blue New York.
But Komatireddy and her husband, oncologist Neil Vasan, are no strangers to a challenge.
The pair have long balanced their high-powered careers (Vasan is the director of Breast Cancer Translational Research at NYU Langone) with managing a young family of six that includes two toddlers.
“I love New York,” remarked Komatireddy. “My campaign is about New Yorkers. It’s not about what’s happening anywhere else in the country, I’m focused on the safety of New Yorkers, and I will tell you, as the only candidate who has traveled to every single one of the 62 counties in this state, New Yorkers are fed up with the crime and fed up with the politics.”
On the merits of their records, their ideas, their ability to articulate them, and their commitment to public safety, the race between herself and James is no contest at all.
Whether or not Komatireddy ultimately prevails, her campaign is destined to expose Letitia James for the dangerous incompetent she is.
And serve as a launch pad for a new, common sense conservative star in a state in desperate need of one.
