Hypocrisy: A feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel – Merriam Webster Dictionary

This definition is one that incumbent U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., should read. Because he is the embodiment of the word. Fighting for his political life in a deep red state that President Donald Trump won with nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2016, Donnelly is trying to fend off his Republican challenger, former state Rep. Mike Braun, who has been gaining ground on the incumbent.

Donnelly’s ran a pretty nasty campaign against Braun. Donnelly, who voted against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has repeatedly attacked Braun, a multimillionaire auto-parts magnate, for importing the products he sells from China.

This sounds fair as the gloves often come off in political races and the mudslinging can get pretty nasty. But there is one problem with Donnelly’s attacks. Stewart Superior Corp., a family business operated by his brother that Donnelly owned stock in, has also received repeated shipments of goods from China for much of this decade.

The website Panjiva, which tracks international trade, said between 2011 and 2017, a time when Donnelly owned as much as $50,000 in company stock, Stewart Superior received more than 120,000 pounds of Chinese materials, spread out across more than 20 shipments. He collected dividend payments in 2016 worth $15,001 to $50,000.

Donnelly’s campaign did not directly address the shipments but noted that the senator sold his stock in the company last year and donated $17,410 in proceeds to charity.

That’s awfully nice of the senator to have donated his proceeds to a charity, but it wasn’t done out of the goodness of his heart. In our opinion, it was done for purely political reasons. We’re sure Donnelly would love to continue to receive those sizable dividend checks, but he sold them because he knew Braun was going to run against him and knew he would be hit with hypocrisy claims once he started going negative, which he has been doing for weeks in TV ads against Braun.

In comparison, Braun’s auto-parts empire, which employs 850 workers at 70 locations across the U.S., obtains Chinese goods through intermediary companies that have imported thousands of shipments in recent years. His stock income from the business was $4.5 million last year, records show.

We’re not disputing the fact that Braun has made a lot of money off of importing products from China. But he’s not the candidate being a hypocrite about it, Donnelly is.

This isn’t the first time Donnelly has drawn unwanted attention for his ties to his family’s company. The longtime outsourcing opponent, who is one of a handful of red-state Democrats running for re-election, faced withering criticism last year after news reports revealed the business operated a factory in Mexico.

This whole campaign being run by Donnelly simply reeks of hypocrisy. It shows a desperate candidate in a deep red state who will do anything to cling to power, even if that means being a hypocrite, which he is.