The Post enthusiastically endorses Saritha Komatireddy over Attorney General Letitia James.
James is a lifelong political hack who has pushed pro-criminal policies for her entire career and has been relentless in hunting headlines and enemy scalps but asleep at the switch when it comes to her core duties of protecting the public.
Komatireddy is a career prosecutor who’s worked under both parties to put away terrorists, cartel members, cybercriminals and other bad guys — and now is determined to use all the powers of the state attorney general to crack down on crime, including fraud and corruption, as well as making the streets safe.
A 41-year-old mother to two sets of twins under the age of 10, Komatireddy knows how badly James has failed: “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,” she 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.
“She stopped doing the job.”
Felony assault in New York City is up a staggering 44% since James took office in 2019, and the scene underground is even more grisly, with a 59% rise in subway felony assault.
Don’t blame me, says James: The AG’s job is “focused on civil matters and not criminal matters.”
That’s a dodge: Komatireddy routinely lists powers James chooses not to use except to chase her ideological causes.
Not to mention other AG outrages, such as wasting $20 million or more to hire outside lawyers to do work her office’s staffers can surely handle and sending at least $54 million in taxpayer funds to criminal-friendly nonprofits.
While Komatireddy was devoting her career to imprisoning threats to society, earning promotions to top nonpartisan federal posts, James has spent her 25 years in elected office pushing to dismantle the machinery of public safety.
She backed the decriminalization of “minor” criminal offenses, “Raise the Age” legislation, “no-cash bail” and discovery reform, the “Right to Know” and “How Many Stops” acts, closing Rikers, the “chokehold” ban and pot legalization.
James first ran for the job mainly promising to prosecute President Donald Trump, and she delivered — suing Team Trump 66 times in one two-year span alone, winning headlines but losing case after case, including her trash civil suit.
A whistleblower in her office, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld, has called out her gross abuses of power in burning “significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies.”
She also loves to prosecute cops but can’t be bothered to do her job when it comes to clearing them of baseless charges.
And she runs the nation’s laziest shop when it comes to chasing down Medicaid fraud, allowing the theft of billions — with some thieves being her own supporters.
Komatireddy’s record is pristine; she’s a nonpartisan whirlwind of energy who can turn the AG’s office into what it’s supposed to be: New York’s prime force for public order and honesty, led by a true people’s prosecutor.
The choice couldn’t be more clear.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
