Former New York Gov. George Pataki is the latest Republican to get into the race for president. Pataki formally announced his candidacy late Thursday morning in Exeter, New Hampshire. In a video posted Thursday morning on YouTube, Pataki says America needs to recapture the spirit of unity that spread through the country following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"We understood we were all Americans who had been attacked and we were going to rise up together, and we did. We need to recapture that spirit, that sense that we are one people," he says in the four-minute video.
After flirting with the idea of a White House run in both 2008 and 2012, Pataki starts the 2016 campaign as a longshot in a crowded Republican field that includes several current and former governors, sitting senators, business leaders and a renowned neurosurgeon.
"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. It's about what we can accomplish together," Pataki says in the video.
Pataki, 69, has worked as a lawyer and opened a consulting firm since leaving office in 2006.