ny_gov_PATAKI

GEORGE PATAKI

• Pataki spent his childhood on a 15-acre fruit and vegetable farm near downtown Peekskill, a small city on the Hudson River. His father was the son of Hungarian immigrants; his mother was of Italian and Irish heritage. Both sets of grandparents lived on the farm, along with several aunts, uncles and 12 cousins. Pataki and his cousins tended corn, tomatoes, fruit, and tobacco on the farm and manned the family's roadside farm stand.

• Pataki attended Yale University, where he majored in history. He became involved with a mainstream Republican group in the Political Union and began to think about a political career. He graduated from Yale in 1967.

• He went on to Columbia Law School, where he made law review and graduated in 1970 at the height of the Vietnam War. Pataki was saved from the draft by poor eyesight. After law school, he joined the Wall Street law firm of Dewey, Ballantine, Busby, Palmer & Wood for four years, and then left to become partner at the firm of Plunkett & Jaffe. His practice consisted mostly of corporate litigation, estates, and real estate.

• He met Elizabeth Rowland while body surfing off Long Island, and when they married in 1973, he persuaded her to move from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Peekskill.

• In the early 1970s, Pataki began to work for Republican gubernatorial candidates, like Nelson Rockefellr in 1970, and Malcolm Wilson in 1974, and later worked as a State Senate aide. By 1977, he had become chairman of the Peekskill Republican Committee.

• Pataki has built a political career out of toppling popular incumbents and entrenched political machines. In his first race in 1991, he defeated the three-term Democratic mayor of Peekskill. Three years later, in 1984, he handily ousted the Democratic Assemblyman. In 1992, he defeated a sitting Republican State Senator (and his former boss) in a primary.

• In 1994, Pataki rose to national prominence when he defied odds by defeating the three-term Governor Mario Cuomo by 49% to 45%.