Former governor Pataki throws hat in the presidential ring

EXETER, N.H. —George Pataki, the 9/11-era New York governor who achieved electoral success as a Republican in a heavily Democratic state, announced his candidacy for the presidential nomination Thursday, offering himself as a unifying figure in a divided nation.

Just as he was overshadowed after the 2001 terrorist attacks by Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York City and President George W. Bush, Pataki opened his 2016 campaign in the shadow of better known rivals. Out of office since 2006, he's a clear underdog in a bustling pack of favorites and longshots.

Pataki told about 150 supporters that an increasingly intrusive government is jeopardizing the freedoms past generations fought for, and he will fight to get government out of people's way.

"It is to preserve and protect that freedom that this morning I announce I'm a candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States," he said.

The low-key Republican moderate flirted with presidential runs in 2008 and 2012 but stopped short. Now he hopes to reignite the bipartisan unity born in the trauma of 2001.

"While I saw the horrors of September 11 first hand, in the days, weeks and months that followed, I also saw the strength of America on display," he said. And "I completely reject the idea that we can only come together in adversity."

Pataki said Americans, with a government that does not restrain freedom, "will once again astonish the world with what we can accomplish."

Political comity is a tall order in a nation—and a party—fraught with division. But Pataki invokes his record working with Republicans and Democrats alike as a three-term governor who in 1994 defeated Mario Cuomo, the liberal stalwart and celebrated orator many Democrats wanted to see run for president.

Pataki, 69, declared his candidacy in a YouTube video, set in a New York skyscraper, and his rhetoric seemed to echo sentiments of the 9/11 aftermath. "We are all in this together," he said. "And let us all understand that what unites us is so much more important than what might seem superficially to divide us."