A former federal prosecutor who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and served as chief of staff at the Drug Enforcement Administration is coming for Letitia James's job, and she's not pulling punches about why.
Saritha Komatireddy, the Republican candidate for New York Attorney General, secured the New York Republican State Committee's endorsement last week and quickly followed it with a broadside against the incumbent. In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Komatireddy accused James of "playing politics with the law" and called her tenure the "definition of failure."
According to Breitbart, the Republican Attorneys General Association has also endorsed Komatireddy for the November fight, signaling national conservative infrastructure is lining up behind the challenge.
Komatireddy's argument is straightforward: while the Attorney General chased headlines, New York fell apart. She pointed to a 26 percent rise in crime during James's tenure and noted that more than a million people fled the state over the same period.
"New York State has seen a 26 percent rise in crime. Crime is up 26 percent. In those same years, more than a million people have left New York. So the population is down and crime is up — that is the definition of failure."
Population shrinking while crime climbs. That's not a messaging problem for James. That's a record.
Komatireddy drew a sharp line between her own career and what she described as James's misplaced priorities. While Komatireddy prosecuted terrorism and international drug trafficking cases at the federal level, she watched New York's safety erode from the inside.
"She's more focused on press releases that play to her far left radical base than actually doing things that help New Yorkers. She doesn't even talk about crime, she doesn't even talk about public safety. All she focuses on is an ideological agenda that makes the state more dangerous and more expensive."
James, who has served as New York's Attorney General since 2019, has an embattled history of using her office to go after President Donald Trump. That pattern, Komatireddy argues, reveals the core problem: an AG more interested in political theater than in the basic duties of the office.
The irony is rich. The woman who built her brand on prosecuting others found herself on the other side of an indictment. Last fall, a Virginia grand jury indicted James on October 9 in connection with a mortgage she took out on a Virginia home. According to the indictment, James claimed the property would serve as her second home to secure more favorable mortgage rates.
The case was later dropped, but the story didn't end there. The DOJ initially vowed to appeal and, according to a source who told NBC News, "ultimately decided to seek a new, untainted indictment against James." The current status of that effort remains unclear.
An attorney general under the shadow of her own indictment, lecturing others about the rule of law. The contradictions write themselves.
Komatireddy also zeroed in on a case that crystallized everything wrong with New York's criminal justice apparatus: the prosecution of Daniel Penny. The young Marine veteran faced charges after the death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway car in 2023. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg pursued second-degree manslaughter, which carried a maximum sentence of 15 years, and criminally negligent homicide, carrying up to four years.
Penny was found not guilty of the negligent homicide charge, and the manslaughter charge was dropped.
For Komatireddy, the case illustrated a government that punishes citizens who step into the void left by its own failures:
"It's not safe in our state, and when you have a government that is failing to keep people safe instead of actually taking steps to prosecute criminals — like I said, bring the homeless and the sick off the streets and off the subways into places of real care — instead of doing those things, they're blaming Good Samaritans for trying to fill the void."
She tied the Penny prosecution directly to the officials responsible.
"That actually highlights the failure of Alvin Bragg, the failure of Leticia James — and that’s exactly what we’re running to change."
New York just elected far-left socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor. The city's trajectory is not exactly correcting itself.
Nobody pretends New York is easy ground for Republicans. Adam Piper, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association, acknowledged the math but argued that Komatireddy changes the equation. A former Supreme Court clerk, former federal prosecutor, former DEA chief of staff, one-time judicial nominee of President Trump, and a married mother of four, she brings credentials that most political committees can only fantasize about.
"Saritha is a unicorn. Saritha is the type of candidate most committees dream of having run. She's the type of person who can be doing anything she wants to, and she decided to put her time, talent, and treasure into this long shot race."
Piper reserved his sharpest language for the incumbent, calling James "really the epitome of everything wrong with the woke, dangerous left that is for cash bail and more crime on the streets."
Asked whether James's name recognition posed a problem, Komatireddy didn't flinch:
"Not at all, because she's a household name for all the wrong reasons."
Strip away the politics, and the race reduces to a simple question: What is an attorney general for?
One answer is that the office exists to keep people safe, to prosecute criminals, and to enforce the law without ideological favor. The other answer, the one James has modeled for six years, is that the office is a launchpad: a platform for press conferences, political vendettas, and progressive bona fides that play well on cable news but do nothing for the woman afraid to ride the subway home.
Komatireddy framed it in personal terms, invoking her parents' immigrant story:
"First of all, New York is sort of America's city. A lot of folks who came to this country, like my parents, they came to New York."
People came to New York because it promised something. Over a million have now left because that promise was broken. Komatireddy is betting that enough of those who stayed are ready to hold someone accountable for breaking it.