Matthew Tully

Trey Hollingsworth recently moved to Indiana. Now he’s running for the 9th District congressional seat, flooding the airwaves with commercials and outspending opponents. It’s effective, and insulting.

It would seem to take a whole lot in this dreary election season for a candidate to inject a new level of cynicism into the political system. But Trey Hollingsworth has done just that.

He’s done it by moving to Indiana from Tennessee just seven months ago with what seems to be the obvious intention of running for a congressional seat in next month’s Republican primary. He’s done it by selling himself as just an average Hoosier, and not a guy who cherry-picked a district and used his fortune to try to buy a seat in Congress. And he’s done it by shrugging his shoulders and acting as if he didn’t know his own father was the big-dollar source behind a super PAC that’s been blasting his political opposition.

Congratulations, Trey. In this season of political cynicism, you are the champ.

And, so, voters in the 9th Congressional District have a choice: Do they take the easy path forward and support the candidate who, along with his pops, has flooded the district with self-funded campaign ads and overwhelmed the opposition with so much super PAC money? Or do they say that some things just aren’t right, even in this ugly political era where just about about anything is acceptable?

Here’s hoping the people of the 9th District, which stretches from Johnson County to the Ohio River, send a message May 3. A message that says not everything is OK, not even in politics. A message that says there are still some things in elections that matter more than money. A message that says if you want to win an Indiana congressional primary this spring, you should have at least lived in the state last spring.

That message won’t fix politics or reform a battered system. And it won’t rid us of dispiriting super PACs, stage-managed candidates or phony campaign commercials. But it will inject a bit of optimism, and perhaps fairness, into this campaign season.

I don’t like to tell people how to vote. But I sure hope voters in the 9th District send that message.

One of Hollingsworth’s four Republican opponents, Attorney General Greg Zoeller, put it well recently. He said this race, down the road, could serve as a case study on the question of whether someone can just pick a district, parachute in from out of state and use big bucks to grab it. The results of that study will tell us a lot about where politics is in 2016.

The funny thing about this bizarre situation is that Hollingsworth seems like an exceedingly bright guy. When we sat down awhile back, back when his campaign still returned my messages, he was smooth and self-deprecating. He was focused on his conservative message and armed with a compelling argument for why someone with his successful business background could bring some sense to Capitol Hill (he runs a company tied to his father’s Tennessee empire that buys and fixes up old industrial sites, including some in Indiana).

He’d be a great candidate. In his home state of Tennessee. Or in Indiana, after he has lived here for at least a year or two. Or if his candidacy didn’t epitomize what is so wrong about the win-at-all-costs philosophy dominating politics.

He’s not the first candidate to move to a state to run for office. A certain presidential candidate did just that when she moved to New York before running for one of its Senate seats in 2000. In Indiana, U.S. Sen. Dan Coats didn’t even own an Indiana home when he rushed back from the D.C. area to run in the primary six years ago.

It’s been done. That doesn’t make it right.

And this case is even more disturbing, because the Hollingsworth family fortune has allowed him to dominate the airwaves in a low-interest primary. If name ID determines this race, he probably wins. If voter anger determines this race, he probably wins because of all of those Zoeller-bashing super PAC ads Hollingsworth’s dad has funded.

In Monroe County, Republican Party Chairman William Ellis said he has seen more Hollingsworth TV ads and received more Hollingsworth campaign mailings than those from the rest of the field combined. That field includes solid conservatives such as Zoeller and state Sens. Brent Waltz and Erin Houchin, as well as Bloomington resident Robert Hall.

“Hollingsworth is running a great campaign,” Ellis said.

I don’t dispute that. He’s worth tens of millions, and his huge financial advantage helps more than anything, providing him with the resources to carefully target voters. He also has run a disciplined campaign with a clear message about being a conservative outsider. In many ways he is an impressive candidate, and he might end up being an excellent congressman.

But his victory May 3 would not be about any of that. It would be about sneaky politics, cynical methods and big money trumping the idea that congressional representatives should be honestly picked from among the people in the states they serve.

You can reach me at matthew.tully@indystar.com or on Twitter: @matthewltully.