Publicly disgraced, out of money, and facing both jail time and a suddenly surging challenger—what was an indicted congressman to do?

Eventually, Hunter seemed to arrive at his answer: Try to eke out a win by waging one of the most brazenly anti-Muslim smear campaigns in recent history.

In the final weeks of the election, Hunter has aired ominous ads warning that his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, is “working to infiltrate Congress” with the support of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has circulated campaign literature claiming the Democrat is a “national security threat” who might reveal secret U.S. troop movements to enemies abroad if elected. While Hunter himself floats conspiracy theories from the stump about a wave of “radical Muslims” running for office in America, his campaign is working overtime to cast Campa-Najjar as a nefarious figure reared and raised by terrorists.

As multiple fact-checkers in the press have noted, these smears have no basis in reality. Campa-Najjar—a 29-year-old former Barack Obama aide who is half-Latino, half-Arab—is a devout Christian who received security clearance when he worked in the White House. His grandfather was involved in the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, but he died 16 years before Campa-Najjar was born, and the candidate has repeatedly denounced him.* (Growing up, Campa-Najjar became estranged from his father, a former Palestinian Authority official, and was raised primarily by his Mexican American mother.)

But facts do not appear to be Hunter’s chief concern. The political strategy here is self-evident: Feed on anti-Muslim prejudice to scare enough conservative voters into pulling the lever for the incumbent—indictment be damned.

California’s Fiftieth District hasn’t drawn much attention from horse-race obsessives this year. There are other races with tighter polls, other House seats more likely to flip. But what’s unfolding here in the suburbs of San Diego represents an unnerving microcosm of this campaign season: white Republicans frightened by cynical conspiracy-mongers; religious minorities frightened by the fallout; a community poisoned by Trumpian politics—and a bitter question hovering over the whole ugly affair: Will it ever get better?

Duncan Hunter is not an easy man to find these days. He rarely holds campaign rallies, and doesn’t attend town halls or debates. When I emailed his office asking for an interview, I was politely told my request would be added to the “list”—and then ignored when I tried to follow up.

Recent polls have shown that around half of the voters in Hunter’s district are sticking with him. But finding surrogates to talk on Hunter’s behalf proved as daunting as nailing down the candidate himself. Emails, phone calls, and Facebook messages to local conservative groups went unreturned. Not even Hunter’s former GOP primary challenger had nice things to say: Shamus Sayed, a Muslim businessman and longtime Republican, told me he found the congressman’s mudslinging “pathetic,” and that he planned to vote for “anyone but Hunter.”