Maybe you didn't intend it, but it sounded kinda like "People will elect a convicted murderer, but they won't elect someone implied to be a pothead protester."
I don't understand what he's getting at either, especially since Mark is involved in FTL and therefore linked to "those evil Keene freak-staters".
Y'all still are not getting it.
These are not politicians you see on TV ads.
These are people who you know in person.
If I
know Mark, because I've worked with him at the animal shelter, or my Aunt Gracie has, or we had a BBQ in Mark's back yard over the summer, or at the festival the town library puts on, or I always see him at the corner store, or at the kids' soccer practice, and so on and on and on... I
know him.
Now any negative advertising is pointless.
Contrast: Neither I nor anybody else knows who "Sam Dodson" is. Never seen him at the places listed above. First I hear of him, he's on the front page of the paper in handcuffs.
Any negative information from that point forward, people are disposed to believe.