Former federal prosecutor Saritha Komatireddy failed to unseat controversial two-term Democratic state Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday despite a spirited campaign, early results showed.
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James declared victory alongside other statewide Democrats, including Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Gov. Kathy Hochul, at the Hilton hotel in Midtown, Manhattan.
“We’ve fought for every New Yorker without fear or favor and tonight New Yorkers have told us loud and clear they want Tish James to finish the job,” she told the crowd, referring to herself in the third person.
“We will continue to stand up, fight back and defend our values.”
As of 10:35 p.m., with 67% of the votes counted, James had 63% of the vote to Komatireddy’s 37%.
The surprisingly strong Republican challenger repeatedly hammered James for politicizing her office and backing the state’s soft-on-crime criminal justice system, blaming her for failing to stand up for victims.
But it wasn’t enough to beat James, who cruised to a third term after a campaign in which the longtime adversary of President Trump’s ran as part of the Empire State’s lefty Democratic machine, campaigning with both Hochul and socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Hochul and DiNapoli, the longtime state comptroller, also easily secured victory Tuesday night, making for a full sweep for Dems on the top of the ticket in the state.
James, the first black woman elected to statewide office in New York, won despite a slew of controversies, including a lawsuit by whistleblower Daniel Wiesenfeld, a former prosecutor in her office, who claimed he was ordered to dig up dirt on Trump and his pals despite no evidence of a crime.
At a debate last month, Komatireddy labeled James a “political hack” for her prosecution against Trump, while James resorted to repeatedly calling the GOP challenger a “Trump puppet.”
“The laws are broken and Letitia James broke them,” Komatireddy charged. “She was the largest champion for having this catch-and-release system.”
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But the controversies did not stick at the polls, with James riding the political wave in the predominantly Democratic state to victory despite Komatireddy pulling to within six points in a Siena University poll last month.
James, a former public defender with the Legal Aid Society, jumped into politics with a run for City Council in 2003, representing a Brooklyn district before becoming public advocate in 2014 — a post she abandoned in 2018 to make her successful run for attorney general, vowing to take on Trump if elected.
In 2024, the AG’s office won a $360 million civil case against Trump, his sons and his former company for overstating property values and lying about his wealth — a case that was later upheld on appeal but without the massive financial payout.
Trump has cited the case as just one example of James’ attempts to target him unfairly.
Komatireddy painted herself as an impartial, tough-on-crime alternative, having graduated magna cum laude from the Harvard School of Law before going to work for the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York in 2013.
A former lecturer at Columbia University Law School, she clerked for Judge Brett Kavanaugh before he was confirmed to the US Supreme Court.
“In New York today, the reality is, criminals have more of an audience with our elected officials than crime victims,” she said at a press conference outside James’ Lower Manhattan offices during the final weeks of the campaign — with more than a half-dozen crime victims and their families by her side.
“They’re all angry,” Komatireddy said. “They’re all tired of being ignored. Each one of them is a victim of lawlessness.”
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