Reports yesterday indicated he was set to drop the announcement and formally enter the race today. Well, the reports are true and former New York Governor George Pataki has added his name to the ever-growing list of 2016 Republican candidates.
Report from CNN:
George Pataki, the Republican who won the governorship three times in heavily Democratic New York, will run for president in 2016.
“My vision was not a partisan vision. It was a vision about people, about what we could accomplish together,” Pataki said as he narrated a four-minute announcement video released Thursday morning. “If we are to flourish as a people, we have to fall in love with America again.”
Despite being a decade-long governor of what was then the nation’s third largest state, Pataki is perhaps the longest of longshots of GOP hopefuls. He barely registers in national opinion polls of the Republican field — if pollsters decide to include him at all.
And Pataki doesn’t fare much better among Republican elites, either: No prominent elected officials or donors have stepped forward to trumpet his bid in a field that many top Republicans tout as one of the most competitive they have ever seen.
Given that support base, it is unlikely that Pataki will make the first Republican debate, which will be limited to the top 10 Republican hopefuls. That could stifle any efforts to increase his name identification among next year’s voters
The four minute video Pataki released outlining his platform:
Not to diminish him, but I’m going to assume that the next post I make which mentions his name will be how he has failed to make the debate cut and, eventually, has dropped out. The field is crowded and his appeal is pretty thin among his peers.
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