George Elmer Pataki (/pəˈtɑːki/; born June 24, 1945) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 53rd governor of New York from 1995 to 2006. An attorney by profession, Pataki was elected mayor of his hometown of Peekskill, New York, and went on to be elected to the State Assembly and the State Senate. He narrowly defeated three-term incumbent Governor Mario Cuomo in 1994 and would go on to be reelected twice more and served three consecutive terms. He was the third Republican since 1923 to win New York's governorship, after Thomas E. Dewey and Nelson Rockefeller. (Source: Wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA)