A member of the Republican Party, Pataki was a lawyer who was elected Mayor of his home town of Peekskill, later going on to be elected to State Assembly, then State Senate. In 1994, he ran for Governor against three-term incumbent Mario Cuomo, defeating him by over a three-point margin as part of the Republican Revolution of 1994. Pataki, succeeding a three-term Governor, would himself be elected to three consecutive terms, and was one of only three Republican governors of New York elected since 1923, the others being Thomas Dewey and Nelson Rockefeller.