Former New York Governor George Pataki entered the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination on Thursday, joining a crowded field of candidates vying to retake the White House for their party.
"It is time to stand up, protect our freedom and take back this government," he said in an announcement video titled "Pataki for President" posted on his website, georgepataki.com.
Pataki, who served three terms as governor from 1995 to 2006, has flirted with running for U.S. Senate or the presidency in past years.
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Pataki, 69, unveiled a “Pataki for President” website ahead of an announcement event Thursday in Exeter, New Hampshire, the first time he's formally entered a presidential race after floating the idea of his candidacy the last two rounds. Almost 14 years removed from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that put him in the national spotlight, Pataki has been unable to stay there.
As he's traveled through early-voting states, stepping into the limelight at events such as the South Carolina Freedom Summit in Greenville along the way, the idea of his candidacy has given birth to the hashtag #Patakimentum, a tongue-in-cheek gesture applied to suggest his ambition.
Still, there may be room for Pataki to carve out. As his fellow Republicans vie to attract the conservative core of the party, he stands as a centrist. He touts the position on the website of "We the People Not Washington," the political-action committee he formed in January to raise cash for his campaign.
“If people can only hear the ideas of 'favored' candidates, Republicans will lose to Hillary Clinton,” the website said of the Democratic front-runner. “America should have leaders with records of accomplishment, who are focused on the issues that matter and who have won tough elections despite challenging demographics.”
As governor of the Democratic state that elected Clinton to the U.S. Senate in 2000, Pataki approved budgets that increased spending faster than inflation and signed a bill that outlawed assault rifles. On the campaign trail, he's said he supports allowing states to control decisions over gay marriage and abortion.
“That's the conservative approach,” he said on Bloomberg Television on May 21 in response to a question about positions that may make it hard for him to win a Republican primary.
Despite Pataki's early visits to New Hampshire and beyond, he barely registers in national polls and is well outside the top 10 that would give him a chance to appear in the first Republican primary debate on Fox News in August.
Being a long shot, though, might be Pataki's comfort zone. In 1994, he was a little-known state senator who put an end to the political career of Mario Cuomo, the three-term governor who was the national voice of liberals during the Ronald Reagan presidency.
He won his first political office in 1981, when he knocked off the Democratic mayor of Peekskill, the New York town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Manhattan where Pataki grew up on his family's farm. In 1984 he beat a Democratic incumbent to win a seat in the state Assembly, then took out a Republican incumbent for a state Senate seat. He's never lost a race for political office.
In 1994, Larry Levy, who at the time was a columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday, was among those who counted out Pataki early. Much as he does in the current presidential field, Pataki had to prove he could unite the mainline Republican Party and conservatives.
It wasn't the last time Levy would be proven wrong by the 6-foot 5-inch politician who comes off as having a homespun sensibility, yet has proven himself a wily tactician, said Levy, now the dean for Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies.
“I wrote about obstacles that he wasn't supposed to overcome, but he overcame,” Levy said by phone. “It happened enough times for me to realize that you have to give this guy a little room, and a little benefit of the doubt.”
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