With each passing year, as blue states like New York and California get more blue (and more corrupt), more and more you hear people say they are hopelessly lost and no longer worth fighting for.
On some level, I get it. I'm not in a blue state, but it can venture into purple territory from time to time. Charlotte, the city I live in, is a blue one that gets a deeper shade of it each election cycle, and along with that comes higher taxes, growth that the city can't keep up with, worsening congestion, and persistent crime issues - from the petty to the violent, dangerous, and sometimes deadly - that are made worse by soft-on-crime district attorneys and judges.
Between issues like that, and Iryna Zarutska's brutal stabbing murder in the summer of 2025 and the killing of 4-year-old kindergartener Caleb Flax in a drive-by shooting as he slept in his bed back in September, it makes some people wonder if it's worth it to stay here and fight the good fight anymore.
I don't knock anyone who would choose to bail. If you don't feel safe, don't feel your family is safe, and don't have hope that things could change for the better, you have some options. You can stay and just grin and bear it; you can move, or you can stick around and fight if that's your sort of thing.
There are people in blue cities and states across America who have chosen to do the latter, some on a small but impactful scale and some on a bigger scale, something many of us outside of the Empire State learned after watching clips from the New York Attorney General debate Thursday night between incumbent AG Letitia "Tish" James and her Republican opponent, former federal prosecutor Saritha Komatireddy.
As RedState reported, Komatireddy came loaded for bear and smoked James on every front, leaving her looking like a deer in headlights and, at one point, getting her to slip up and admit the facts and the law were not important to her when it came to considering guilt or innocence in a case. Komatireddy called her out on it immediately. "Well, there you go, gentlemen, you don't have to look at the facts and the law, your Attorney General," she repeated, gesturing to James:
UNREAL: After watching the entire New York State Attorney General debate, I can’t get past Letitia James’s statement: “you don’t have to look at the facts and the law.” Since when is the state’s top law enforcement officer allowed to disregard the very facts and laws she swore to uphold?
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) October 9, 2026
This was another epic smackdown moment:
“New York spends $126 billion on Medicaid every year. That’s more per resident than any other state in the country, and twice as much per resident as New Jersey. That doesn’t make any sense. We’re both blue states with similar demographics and similar policies.
There’s about $40 billion in unexplained spending that Letitia James has failed to investigate.
We used to have one of the best Medicaid fraud units in the country under previous Democratic attorneys general. We recovered about $250 million a year. Letitia James came in, and it took a nosedive to $19 million.
Under previous Democratic attorneys general, we secured about 100 criminal convictions a year. Under Letitia James, that number hit an all-time low of eight.
She gets 2,000 patient abuse complaints a year and secures maybe one or two convictions. That means someone could be punching an elderly patient in a nursing home, and no one is doing anything.”
Saritha Komatireddy JUST STEAMROLLED Letitia James in this debate!🔥🔥🔥 Saritha Komatireddy: “New York spends $126 billion on Medicaid every year. That’s more per resident than any other state in the country, and twice as much per resident as New Jersey. That doesn’t make any sense. We’re both blue states with similar demographics and similar policies. There’s about $40 billion in unexplained spending that Letitia James has failed to investigate. We used to have one of the best Medicaid fraud units in the country under previous Democratic attorneys general. We recovered about $250 million a year. Letitia James came in, and it took a nosedive to $19 million. Under previous Democratic attorneys general, we secured about 100 criminal convictions a year. Under Letitia James, that number hit an all-time low of eight. She gets 2,000 patient abuse complaints a year and secures maybe one or two convictions. That means someone could be punching an elderly patient in a nursing home, and no one is doing anything.” https://t.co/fNwnJLj3md
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) October 9, 2026
The full debate can be watched here.
I don't know much about Ms. Komatireddy, but I do know that it takes guts as a Republican to take on the corrupt Democrat machine in New York against all odds in a statewide race where the (Democrat) winner is usually preordained after the primaries are over.
But neither that nor the lawfare/political spotlight-driven James nor the morally bankrupt, anti-American NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has deterred Komatireddy, who seems to understand that in the uphill, seemingly unwinnable battles, the seeds of change cannot grow and take root until they are planted.
So for those of you who, for reasons of your own, have decided to stay in New York, California, Oregon, or any other state where it feels like the point of no return has been reached, remember that there are people like Komatireddy out there giving it their all and fighting for you and for the future of your community, your state, your country, inspiring many more to never give up - and maybe even join her.