Former New York Gov. George Pataki announces his White House bid in New Hampshire on May 28, 2015.
Former Gov. George Pataki, R-N.Y., joined a growing GOP field of candidates Thursday and announced he is running for president at an event in Exeter, New Hampshire. The three-term governor of New York chose the Granite State because it is an early primary state and is more in line with his more moderate views.
Pataki, who has never lost an election, invoked his three favorite Republican presidents, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt. But he also knocked the likely 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party as a whole.
“They say we are against the middle class. This too is nonsense,” he said. “Unless by middle class, they mean someone who left the White House ‘dead broke,’ and 10 years later had $100 Million. Unless by middle class they mean someone who charges a poor country $500,000 for a half-hour speech. That’s their party’s candidate. She speaks for the middle class? They are the party of privilege; we are the party of the middle class.”
“They say we, are anti-immigrant,” he said. “We, the proud children, grandchildren, and descendants of immigrants, know that immigration has and will continue to enhance the greatness of this country.”
After thanking his Hispanic supporters in Spanish, Pataki said any serious immigration reform plan “must secure the border” in the interest of national security. In fact, the son of immigrants speaks Hungarian, Spanish, French and German. He spoke another line of Spanish in his speech, stating that “everyone coming here is coming not to harm us, but to be a part of a better America.”
Because Pataki falls on the more moderate scale of Republican candidates, particularly in his support for abortion, he focused on other issues that serve up red meat to the Republican base.
“I’d repeal oppressive laws like Obamacare and end Common Core,” Pataki said. “And I’d shrink the size of the federal work force, starting with bureaucrats overseeing Obamacare, and fire every corrupt IRS employee abusing government power to discriminate on the basis of politics or religion.”
In addition, Pataki railed against the government-business partnership that breeds cronyism and leaves middle class Americans behind. He said, in one of his more passionate statements, he would invoke a ban on members of Congress from lobbying.
“Today, there is one former member of Congress lobbying for every current member and the first thing I would do is ban members of Congress from ever lobbying. If you serve one day, you are banned, go home,” he said.
Starting with the mayoral election in his hometown of Peekskill, New York in 1982, Mr Pataki is undefeated in political elections. In 1984, he successfully won as an underdog for the New York House, and in 1992, he won a state Senate race. But it was his three gubernatorial election victories that the former governor, who received widespread praise for his leadership during the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center, plans to tout and point to as evidence he can defeat Hillary Clinton.
However, Pataki, as do most of the other GOP candidates, faces an uphill battle for the Republican nomination. He is the ninth candidate to announce he will seek the nomination and, according to the average of polls, would be excluded from the first Republican debate hosted by FOX News. The rules state that only the top 10 candidates in the national polling average will have a place on the debate stage.
