GOSHEN – If you live in Orange County, there’s a good chance that in the final days of the campaign your phone rang and you heard one of these two messages.

“Hi. This is George Pataki. Despite the bad news we hear in many places across our country, there’s one county in New York that stands out as a shining success story, Orange County. Thanks to Ed Diana, the county tax rate has been cut in four of the last six years.” That was part of a recorded message by the former governor.

“This is Mayor Mike Bloomberg. I’m not calling about the race for mayor, but there is a race for county executive in Orange County that is important for all of us. Ed Diana has delivered for the people of Orange County,” the mayor said.

Robo calls are effective because they catch the listener’s attention, and they are cost effective, said Diana’s political strategist Jay Townsend.

“The reason is very simple. A robo call can be done for anywhere from 6 ½ to 10 cents depending on the volume of calls that you are doing. There is no cheaper way to target a message to a specific audience than with a robo call and that’s just because of the laws of economics,” he said.

Robo calls aren’t the only way to reach large numbers of people inexpensively. There are mass e-mailings. Popular Assemblyman Kevin Cahill of Kingston sent one out on Tuesday morning asking for support for his brother, Brian, the Ulster County Legislature Majority Leader, who was seeking reelection.

The e-mails apparently didn’t work.  Cahill lost.