IN POLITICS and camera sales, image is everything.

On the political side, you put your candidate in a setting: a polluted harbor, a highway that looks like a parking lot, a breathtaking mountain landscape -- and you have a script that plays off the visual. "My opponent has allowed his friends in business to foul the waters. ... My opponent allowed loggers to threaten our scenic heritage. ... My opponent locked us into four-hour commutes," etc.

So what are we to make of a news event staged last week by Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. at Chick & Ruth's Delly in Annapolis with former Democratic Gov. Marvin Mandel?

Though Mr. Mandel's conviction on federal corruption charges later was overturned, he spent nearly two years in a federal prison. And Mr. Ehrlich has based his campaign for governor on changing a "culture of corruption" in Annapolis.

The Republican candidate has had to fend off the argument that he cannot really change much in Annapolis because he, too, is part of the general culture. Mr. Ehrlich served in the House of Delegates and still has many friends there.

His record is a blessing and a curse, politically speaking. He could explain much of it away by invoking the need to have relationships if you want to be effective. At bottom, he says, the public trust has the protection of his personal integrity. Nothing in this campaign or any earlier ones challenges that.

Candidate Ehrlich says he wants to use the former governor's widely respected expertise as a master of state government. In the immediate political sense, he hoped his embrace of Mr. Mandel might attract support from undecided voters who wonder if he knows enough about state government and its $22 billion budget to serve as its CEO. Mr. Mandel's near-endorsement, the candidate figured, would swing some of those voters to his side.

But what a risk. Wouldn't many people see Mr. Mandel as the once-convicted former governor before they saw him as a policy wonk? Why take that chance?

In Annapolis, Mr. Mandel is an elder statesman, fondly regarded. After he was convicted, many Marylanders expressed sympathy for him.

But over and against the inside baseball comes the image: Bob Ehrlich, reformer, courting Marvin Mandel, focal point of a prominent corruption trial.

Pressed to explain his decision to make Mr. Mandel a high-level adviser, Mr. Ehrlich said he would not renounce his friendship with the former governor -- or with convicted felon Bruce C. Bereano, Mr. Mandel's occasional lobbying partner in Annapolis, or with Sen. Clarence M. Mitchell IV. Mr. Mitchell was defeated in his re-election bid this year after a run-in with the ethics committee.

Loyalty, to be sure, is an admirable element of character. But those who seek the public trust must put public interest ahead of everything. If -- when -- a campaign contributor wants a state contract, what part will loyalty play? All things being equal in politics, you help your friends. But things better be equal: Your friend better be qualified and the award process open and carefully adhered to. Relationships have had too much to do with the business and culture of Annapolis.

Finally, you have to wonder why Mr. Ehrlich would take such a risk at the end of a campaign in which he appeared to be pulling ahead. Turns out the decision to meet with Mr. Mandel came before a recent poll showed him with a 4-point lead.

Also, the Ehrlich campaign believed it was in a competition with Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for Mr. Mandel's endorsement. The former governor had gone to two Townsend campaign events. And later, the Ehrlich camp says, she called Mr. Mandel repeatedly asking him not to endorse Mr. Ehrlich.

Ms. Townsend's spokesman, Peter Hamm, said he knew of no contact between the campaign -- including Ms. Townsend -- and Mr. Mandel.

The former governor says she called several times over the last few weeks when she thought he might endorse her opponent. Then she apparently worried that the photo session at Chick & Ruth's would look like an endorsement. Mr. Mandel did not officially endorse Mr. Ehrlich -- though the newspaper photograph suggested otherwise. And Ms. Townsend's efforts to stop the meeting gives it an opponent's validation.

There's no question Mr. Mandel can help a new governor -- particularly one facing a $1.7 billion deficit. His value to a reformer in the midst of a close campaign remains hard to comprehend.

If he's elected, Mr. Ehrlich may yet become a change agent in the culture he's attacked. To succeed, he'll have to pay more attention to symbol and to image -- and to the substance underlying both.

C. Fraser Smith is an editorial writer for The Sun. His column appears on Sundays.