Could New York Elect a Republican Attorney General?

“Is it your quinceañera?” asked Saritha Komatireddy, the Republican candidate for New York attorney general, during a campaign stop at a pizzeria in the Bronx last week.

A Hispanic teenager wearing a sparkly headband and a floral dress stared back blankly. “Um, no,” the girl replied politely.

The encounter was Komatireddy in miniature: earnest, but slightly awkward—as though she were still getting the hang of the whole shaking-hands-and-kissing-babies part of campaigning. She had just introduced herself to the teenager’s parents, explained her plans to get repeat offenders off the street, hospitalize mentally ill homeless people, and prosecute government fraud.

A former federal prosecutor who brought successful cases against ISIS terrorists and Mexican drug cartels, Komatireddy, 42, is in an uphill battle to topple incumbent Letitia James, who Komatireddy accuses of “totally failing” to keep New Yorkers safe. If Komatireddy wins, it will be because she was able to weave together several threads—homelessness, subway violence, and locked-up store shelves among them—into a tapestry of urban dysfunction and persuade voters to blame them on James.