Card Check Champion George Pataki to Lurk at New Hampshire Debate.

George Pataki sounds like he’s going to prove F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong about second acts in American life.  The three-term former New York governor will watch the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire tonight and hold an event in Manchester tomorrow to talk about it.

Pataki, who was not popular when he left office in 2006, is pondering a bid for president by donning the glad rags of a fiscal conservative.  He’s all about addressing debt, something he had little time for as governor.

If you need to know just one thing about Pataki, it’s in this 2002 endorsement editorial from Crain’s New York Business:

Two different George Patakis have served as governor of New York during the past eight years. The first George Pataki, more in evidence in the first term, cut taxes, restrained state spending, sought fundamental reform in areas like health care and counterproductive government regulation, and pushed the state toward pro-growth policies. The second George Pataki, more in vogue in the second term, cut endless deals with special interest groups like health care labor unions, and allowed state spending to increase at more than 8% a year, or four times the rate of inflation.

In one campaign, Pataki was the darling of New York’s powerful Local 1199.  In its endorsement of him, the union declared:

Appearing March 18 before our 94-member Executive Council, which voted unanimously to endorse him, Pataki expressed pride that New York was the first state to pass card check union recognition, which protects workers from the management intimidation or coercion that too often accompanies union election campaigns.

Maybe he’ll talk about that Wednesday morning.