Pataki starts 2016 bid with broadside at Hillary Clinton’s ‘party of privilege’

Former New York Gov. George Pataki on Thursday announced his 2016 White House bid, pitching himself as “a solutions guy” who has governed for more than a decade in a deep blue state. 

“Washington politicians and bureaucrats think they know better than us,” Pataki said during a speech in Exeter, N.H., launching his campaign. “You are our servants, not our masters.” 

{mosads}The long-shot candidate joins an extremely crowded field of Republican presidential hopefuls who are vying for a chance to take on Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee in 2016.

In his speech, Pataki took aim at Clinton’s wealth and with that of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to suggest the Republican Party best represents those in the middle class.

“Unless by middle class they mean someone who left the White House dead broke and 10 years later had $100 million,” he said to cheers. “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?” Pataki asked. “They are the party of privilege.”

Pataki outlined issues he plans to push on the campaign trail, including a lifetime ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists, repealing “oppressive laws like ObamaCare and Common Core” and eliminating “excessive taxes that crush small businesses.”

He also called for a simpler tax code, low manufacturing taxes and firing employees of the IRS who improperly use their positions for political purposes. 

Democrats issued a statement brushing off Pataki’s entrance into the 2016 race.

“Another day, another Republican running for President who opposes raising the minimum wage and whose agenda is wrong for the middle class,” said Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee.

Pataki downplayed the findings of a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier Thursday showing five Republican hopefuls locked atop a crowded 2016 GOP field. Pataki did not register any support in the survey. 

“The polls have never bothered me,” he said during an appearance on Fox New’s “America’s Newsroom” before his speech, pointing to his time running for governor of New York. 

Pataki mounted a come-from-behind win in 1994 against longtime incumbent Mario Cuomo, New York’s Democratic governor, and was elected two more times before leaving office at the end of 2006.

“I’m optimistic we can overcome the odds as we have in the past,” he said on Fox, which aired the entirety of his campaign announcement live. CNN also cut to his declaration in New Hampshire, which hosts the nation’s first primary.

On foreign policy, Pataki advocated in his speech for building up America’s military “so that we don’t have to use it” and suggested deploying U.S. combat troops to fight Islamic militants in the Middle East if necessary.

He called for the U.S. to stand against a “resurgent Russia,” make sure Iran “never has a nuclear weapon” and provide “whatever aid is necessary” to those fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on the ground. 

“We will defend freedom, but we will not be the world’s policeman,” he said. 

Pataki emphasized his role as governor during the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks during a campaign video released early in the day. The footage ends with Pataki overlooking 1 World Trade Center, built in the area near where the twin towers once stood

“That’s exactly what we hoped, that we would not just rebuild what was here but build higher and taller and soar to new heights, and show people we weren’t going to think small or live afraid,” he said.

“I know I can win this election, and that’s one of the reasons I’m running,” he told Fox.