Phil Reisman: Rob Astorino raises Ebola alarm amid sinking campaign

Rob Astorino has a terminal disease on his hands — and it isn't the Ebola virus. It's his campaign for governor.

It's in the throes of a slow and agonizing death.

His poll numbers are stagnant. After months of campaigning, a significant number of voters still don't know enough about him to form an opinion.

Women voters by and large think he's a dud.

He has barely $1 million against incumbent Andrew Cuomo's $20 million. He's against the gun-control tenets of the SAFE Act, but the National Rifle Association gave him only $1,000, which is a generous donation only if he were running for Mount Pleasant town supervisor and not for the most important elective office in arguably the most important state in the union.

Fellow Republican county executives from Nassau and Onondaga just announced they are backing the incumbent, which is an embarrassment. And Cuomo won't debate him one-on-one on TV.

As a result Astorino has been reduced to calling Cuomo names and stalking him at public events.

Astorino is desperately in need of attention, anything to jumpstart his flagging campaign.

One way to get attention real fast is to yell fire in a crowded movie theater — and Astorino came awfully close to doing that Wednesday when he told the world that while there were no locally reported cases of the dreaded Ebola, there were questions being raised about symptoms experienced by a patient who was being treated at an undisclosed Westchester County hospital.

Astorino divulged this bit of news after prompting from Fred Dicker, the host of a live morning radio program on Talk 1300 AM in Albany. Dicker said he had learned of a "serious matter going on right now in Westchester County that you're involved in, dealing with Ebola."

Astorino's reply was carefully worded, leaving me to suspect that he and Dicker had discussed the question and answer before going on the air.

"I found out late last night that there is a patient at one of our hospitals in Westchester that was from West Africa," Astorino said. "He has not been there recently, but he has been in contact with people who were."

"He is being treated. They cannot tell if it's Ebola.They do notbelieve that it is." (italics mine) "They believe it is low risk, but they are taking precautions. And I hope it's not. I hope that obviously, he's OK."

Good grief. In the space of a few seconds, Astorino alarmed the public about Ebola and then said, well, it probably isn't Ebola. Hell, for all we know the guy could be suffering from a nasty case of eczema.

Later in the day, Astorino's office put out a press release saying that since August the county Health Department has gotten 11 "inquiries" from hospitals. "Upon review none of the individuals had any risk factors, exposures or indicators that would warrant testing for Ebola."

This reminds me of an old George Carlin joke about the discovery of a new disease that has no symptoms, is impossible to detect and for which there is no known cure. It ends: "Fortunately no cases have been reported thus far."

Now, it's true that as county executive Astorino has a responsibility to keep the public informed about important matters. But this smelled like a manufactured crisis, a pretext for holding a press conference and for grabbing the spotlight in a lopsided gubernatorial race.

He said the hospitals must take an "abundance of caution" — and he's right about that.

The problem is that rumors travel faster than any deadly virus. And the only word people will hear is Ebola. They will not hear the caveats, disclaimers and qualifiers.

It's an unwitting prescription for panic, or at least unnecessary anxiety.

Astorino, who is ginning up his proposal to ban flights from Western Africa, can recite the number of Ebola cases in Sierra Leone, but one wonders if he knows that Sierra Leone, as well as several other African nations, have diplomatic residences in New Rochelle. Does he propose quarantining them?

Cuomo is a slippery politician, something that Astorino has pointed out over and over again. The governor is currently under a federal investigation for allegedly interfering with the work of the anti-corruption Moreland Commission.

Nevertheless, a Qunnipiac poll released Wednesday still has Cuomo way ahead, by 20 points. Worse for Astorino, when asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him, 43 percent said they didn't know enough about him.

Those numbers give Astorino the survival odds of a real Ebola patient. He needs a miracle cure.

He's praying that Cuomo will be indicted.

Reach Phil Reisman at preisman@lohud.com. Twitter: @philreisman.