Ex-Governor Pataki Joins Republican Race For White House

@AFP
Ex-Governor Pataki Joins Republican Race For White House

New York (AFP) — George Pataki, the former governor who led New York during the September 11, 2001 attacks, on Thursday threw his hat into the crowded ring of Republicans running for the White House.

Announcing his bid for the presidency in a brief video, the 69-year-old centrist made an emotional appeal for national unity and promised to make America great once again.

“What unites us is so much more important than what might seem superficially to divide us. If we are to flourish as a people we have to fall in love with America again,” he said.

The son of a postman, Pataki studied at Yale University and Columbia Law School. He played up his centrist credentials as a leader who could get things done across the United States’ fraught party lines.

“I was a Republican governor in a very deep blue state, the state of New York and I was governor for three terms and it’s because, at the end, people realized my vision was not a partisan vision it was a vision about people, about what we could accomplish together.”

His video closed with images of the new World Trade Center, the highest office building in the Western Hemisphere built after the 9/11 attacks and which Pataki was the first to name “Freedom Tower.”

It marks a first White House bid for Pataki, who was an ardent supporter of America’s last Republican president, George W. Bush and who has long flirted with the idea of contesting the presidency.

Married to Libby for 41 years, the couple have four children, including two sons who served in the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a daughter who is a best selling novelist.

“Washington has grown too big, too powerful, too expensive and too intrusive,” said Pataki. “It is time to stand up, protect our freedom and take back this government.”

More than a dozen prominent Republicans have already announced their bid to win the party’s nomination for the 2016 election.

Screenshot: Pataki for President 2016/YouTube

Advertising

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

Judge In Trump Georgia Case Says Willis Can Continue Prosecution
Fani Willis , right, in Fulton County courtroom

March 15 (Reuters) - The Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump's trial on charges of trying to overturn his election defeat in the U.S. state said that lead prosecutor Fani Willis can remain on the case, so long as she removes a deputy she had a personal relationship with.

Keep reading...Show less
Russian Witness Against Biden Received $600K From 'Trump Associates'

Alexander Smirnov, center, leaving courthouse in Las Vegas on February 20, 2024

Photo by Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal

I’ll bet you didn’t know that it is possible in this great big world of ours to live a comfortable life being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing basically nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly, but the money you get is unattached to normal stuff we are all familiar with like a job, complete with job-related duties and office hours and a W-2 and maybe even a job title. The money can thus be described by what it is not, which is aboveboard and visible. Instead, this kind of money often ends up in the kinds of accounts said to be “controlled” by you or others, which is to say, accounts which may not, and often do not, have your name on them.

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}