If you call someone a carpetbagger, you disapprove of them because they are trying to become a politician in an area which is not their home, simply because they think they are more likely to succeed there.
[US, disapproval]
He had come to Washington, not as a common carpetbagger, but a man well known.
carpetbagger in British English
(ˈkɑːpɪtˌbæɡə)
noun
1.
a politician who seeks public office in a locality where he or she has no real connections
2. British
a person who makes a short-term investment in a mutual savings or life-assurance organization in order to benefit from free shares issued following the organization's conversion to a public limited company
3. US
a Northern White who went to the South after the Civil War to profit from Reconstruction
carpetbagger in American English
(ˈkɑrpətˌbægər)
US
noun
1.
any of the Northern politicians or adventurers who went South to take advantage of unsettled conditions after the Civil War
contemptuous term with reference to the luggage they used in traveling light
2.
any politician, promoter, etc. from the outside whose influence is resented
Examples of 'carpetbagger' in a sentence
carpetbagger
He had come to Washington, not as a common carpetbagger, but a man well known and, in financial circles, respected.
Gaskin, Catherine THE AMBASSADOR'S WOMEN (2001)
I don't know what a carpetbagger is, but it didn't sound right.
Gaskin, Catherine THE AMBASSADOR'S WOMEN (2001)
I can't help feeling she's something of a carpetbagger, even if she is lieutenant governor.