George Pataki will leave behind a record as governor marked by a slew of early political victories that quickly gave way to frustration over an inability to push budget cuts and other campaign promises past a recalcitrant state Assembly, observers of the governor said yesterday.

After defeating Governor Cuomo in 1994, Mr. Pataki, a former member of the Assembly, quickly capitalized on campaign pledges to reduce government spending and taxation, and to restore the death penalty to the state.

While the governor has for the most part protected those early tax cuts, critics of the governor have held Mr. Pataki responsible for sharp increases in state spending, particularly during his second and third terms; legislative gridlock that has led to record-late budgets, and the plight of western New York’s industrial manufacturing base.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the governor saw his approval rating skyrocket to 81%, but public support has fallen sharply since then as Mr. Pataki has come under criticism for delays in the construction of the Freedom Tower on the ground zero site.

Some of his sharpest critics have been conservatives who fault Mr. Pataki for election-year alliances with labor unions and for not doing more to nurture Republican power in the state.

“He made a good start and then sat back and said, ‘Look at the wonderful thing I have accomplished,'” a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, E.J. McMahon, said.

A journalist, John Miller, wrote: “The governor has strayed from the more or less conservative principles that marked his political rise, lost his ability to bend to the state Legislature, and abandoned his responsibility to strengthen the GOP in New York.” That indictment came in an infamous cover piece for National Review magazine, “Spurious George,” that transposed the governor’s face on the cartoon body of Curious George.

In his speech declaring that he wouldn’t seek a fourth term, Mr. Pataki took credit yesterday for reductions in crime rates, welfare rolls, and taxes, and for increases in jobs.

“New York is a different state, a better state than it was 10 years ago,” he said.

A Long Island Republican congressman, Peter King, called Mr. Pataki an “effective” leader but criticized the governor for not “standing up” to the state Assembly led by Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat of Manhattan, who bitterly clashed with the governor.

“Being an executive is very tough,” Mr. King said. “It’s hard to keep the momentum alive.”

Since Mr. Pataki took office, state spending has increased at an annual rate of about 5% to $106.6 billion from $61.9 billion, according to the deputy research director at the Citizens Budget Commission, Elizabeth Lynam. That is about double the rate of inflation. Annual spending increased by $20 billion in Mr. Pataki’s second term alone.

Mr. Pataki’s efforts to enforce the death penalty, which was brought back in 1995, were derailed after the state Court of Appeals declared a portion of the law unconstitutional and cleared the state’s death row of all four of its inmates.

In the arena of education, conservatives praised the governor for approving the creation of charter schools in 1998 but criticize Mr. Pataki for not linking school spending to performance.

“There is no systematic effort on the state level to direct money toward successful schools and away from failing schools,” the president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, Thomas Carroll, said.

Despite the spending increases, supporters of the governor and business groups said Mr. Pataki has generally pushed the state in the right direction.

“New York is stronger economically than we were 10 years ago,” the director of research of the Business Council of New York State, Robert Ward, said. “We’re more competitive in the national and international marketplace.”

In his first year in office, Mr. Pataki and the Legislature cut state income taxes by 25%, and the following year they reduced business costs by lowering rates for workers’ compensation. In 2003, the Legislature overrode the governor’s budget vetoes and temporarily increased income and sales taxes. The governor managed to eliminate the estate tax in 2001, but federal tax changes have since restored the cuts.