Saritha Komatireddy
Advanced from the Republican and Conservative Party primaries unopposed; both primaries were canceled.
Saritha Komatireddy is the Republican and Conservative Party nominee for Attorney General, running a law-and-order campaign against incumbent Letitia James. A former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York for more than a decade and later chief of staff of the Drug Enforcement Administration, she has not previously held elected office. She has not been elected to office before; if elected she would be the first Republican New York Attorney General since Dennis Vacco left office in 1999.[1][12][13]
Positions on the issues
- SupportsIncrease police funding and staffing
Says the Attorney General's office should prioritize supporting district attorneys, sheriffs and police over investigating law enforcement, and would shift office resources toward criminal prosecution.[14]
“The attorney general has more people assigned to investigate cops than investigate criminals, and that's a problem.”
In their words — priorities
- Prosecuting crime and supporting law enforcement, including redirecting the Attorney General's office to devote more of its roughly 700 attorneys to criminal prosecution rather than police-misconduct investigations.[14]
- Reducing homelessness and untreated severe mental illness, including a plan to build residential treatment centers statewide and launch an Office of Civil Commitment to lead a stronger response to severe mental illness.[19]
- Fraud prevention, citing a report that ranked New York's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit among the worst in the nation under James and pledging to add prosecutors, pursue fraud and recover taxpayer dollars for patients and seniors.[20]
- Redirecting an estimated $3 billion in opioid-settlement funds from harm-reduction programs toward residential drug-treatment facilities.[14]
Background
- Graduated cum laude from Harvard University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Harvard Law Review.[1]
- Clerked for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, 2009–2010.[1]
- Served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York from 2013 to 2019, prosecuting terrorism, cybercrime, narcotics, money-laundering and foreign-corruption cases, including cases against alleged al-Qaida, ISIS and Mexican drug-cartel figures.[12][13]
- Nominated by President Trump in 2020 to a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York; the nomination was returned to the president, unconfirmed, at the end of the Senate session in January 2021.[1]
- Served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and later became a partner at the law firm Holtzman Vogel and a lecturer at Columbia Law School.[12][13]