When Donald Trump decided towards the end of 2014 to make a bid for the most powerful job in the world, one of his first tasks was to appoint a manager to run his presidential campaign. The name he landed on was pure Trump: a former lobbyist for the seafood industry who had never run a national campaign, who had staged debates in public with a cardboard cutout, and whose only claim to fame was sneaking a gun into the US Capitol.

And so it came to pass that Corey Lewandowski became the behind-the-scenes mastermind of one of the most bewildering political campaigns in history. In no small part, Trump’s unlikely rise from maverick outsider to frontrunner on the verge of securing the Republican party nomination must be credited to this 42-year-old, who himself has undergone an astonishing ascent from the relative obscurity of New Hampshire politics to stand at the real estate billionaire’s side.

Lewandowski’s approach to the campaign is summed up in a simple slogan that so far has proved to be devastatingly effective: “Let Trump be Trump”. As the Wall Street Journal noted, he has scrawled the phrase over a white board in his office in Trump Tower. Yet the dynamic could just as well be reversed: Trump has run his campaign under the rubric “Let Lewandowski be Lewandowski”.

That logic was played out this week when Trump continued to defend Lewandowski even after his campaign manager had committed the cardinal sin of any political sidekick by becoming the story. On Tuesday, police in Jupiter, Florida, charged the aide with simple battery after Lewandowski was accused by a reporter for a pro-Trump rightwing website of forcefully grabbing her at a rally.

The details of the alleged incident are grubby. The former reporter for Breitbart, Michelle Fields, was trailing after Trump asking him questions at the end of a press conference on 8 March when she was suddenly yanked by the arm by a man with a buzzcut answering to the description of Lewandowski. A social media firestorm ensued in which Trump’s campaign manager accused Fields of being “delusional” as “I never touched you”, only to have the reporter post a picture of her bruised arm.

The subsequent release by Jupiter police of video footage captured by Trump’s own security cameras at the hotel venue clearly showed Lewandowski grabbing Fields and pulling her away from the candidate.

It may not have been the most earth-shattering of incidents, but it was toxic because it conformed to some of the most ugly and controversial aspects of Trump’s unconventional charge on the White House.

Not least, it fits a pattern of low-level bullying-cum-violence that has become a feature of Trump rallies. The Red Bull-chugging Lewandowski has himself been reported as having physically manhandled protesters at campaign events, as well as showing a disdain for reporters and their public function that borders on thuggery. After Politico published a piece raising concerns about his conduct, the news site found one of its named reporters turned away at the door.

All of which has made Lewandowski the poster boy for a new type of politics that over the past six months Trump has unleashed on a stunned and increasingly confused America. It has left other political professionals bemused, including seasoned practitioners such as John Weaver, a veteran of both of John McCain’s presidential campaigns who is now acting as chief strategist to Trump’s rival John Kasich.

“I have never heard of a campaign manager in politics getting involved in tugging, pulling, hitting demonstrators or reporters,” Weaver told the Guardian. “Maybe Lewandowski is confusing his job with professional wrestling, I don’t know, but I don’t think he’s doing any services to politics.”

Short on experience, big on nous

Corey Lewandowski: the perfect embodiment of Trump’s unorthodox approach to politics. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters

So how did Trump manage to find such a perfect embodiment of his unorthodox approach in Corey Lewandowski? The two men met in 2014 in New Hampshire, where Lewandowski was working as state director of Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party-leaning group funded by billionaire rightwing agitators the Koch brothers.

A spark must have passed between them, though you have to assume it wasn’t based on Trump’s admiration for the younger man’s experience in running successful political campaigns, as Lewandowski had very little. In fact, he hadn’t run a campaign for a dozen years before joining the real estate tycoon’s cause.

In 1994, Lewandowski ran his own failed campaign for a seat on the Massachusetts state legislature. In 2002, Lewandowski organized the failed primary campaign of then New Hampshire senator Bob Smith. A two-term senator best known for waving a plastic fetus on the Senate floor, Smith had run a long-shot presidential campaign and then briefly defected from the Republican party. On his return to the GOP, he faced a primary challenge from John E Sununu, a three-term congressman whose father John H Sununu was a former governor of New Hampshire.

Lewandowski was hired to be Smith’s campaign manager and promptly attacked Sununu, an Arab-American, for accepting a contribution from a Republican donor who had previously served as lawyer for the Holy Land Foundation, a group with ties to Hamas. He told reporters: “The people of New Hampshire want someone in the US Senate with clear, concise views on terrorism. They’ll judge a congressman based on the people he associates with, his voting record and his campaign contributions.”

Lewandowski went on to slam Sununu as anti-Israel. The attacks drew condemnation from many in the Republican party and Sununu eventually won by an eight-point margin.

In an interview with the Guardian in August, Smith praised Lewandowski as being “very much a people person”. He noted similarities between his campaign and the Trump effort in that “the so-called establishment of the party was not supportive of my candidacy” either.

Controversy has followed Lewandowski around like a faithful dog. As a congressional aide in the late 1990s to former Ohio congressman Bob Ney, he brought an unloaded gun into a House of Representatives building on Capitol Hill. He insisted it was all a big mistake, as the gun was lying unnoticed at the bottom of a laundry bag, but true to type when the firearm was confiscated he sued (unsuccessfully) to have it returned.

In 2010, working with Americans for Prosperity, he went on stage to debate tax cuts. As his opponent, he faced a cardboard cutout of then New Hampshire governor John Lynch, a ruse he used at rallies to goad the Democrat in front of Tea Party crowds.

Lewandowski has been summoned on the battery charges relating to Michelle Fields to appear in a Palm Beach court on 4 May. He has vowed to enter a plea of not guilty, saying he is “completely confident that he will be exonerated”.



His insistence that he sees no problem with his own public posture – the word “abrasive” is often applied to him – is telling. Lewandowski is convinced that he is one of a new breed of political animal that is challenging the complacent old guard of establishment politicians and their bag handlers.

“The problem with the professional political class is they make money regardless of who wins,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “We want people working on the Trump campaign who are tired of the way things are. That’s the way voters feel.”

To shake up tired old politics is one thing; to allegedly inflict bruises on a reporter quite another – a distinction that seems to be getting lost on board the Trump charabanc.

“Campaigns always reflect the values of the candidate,” John Weaver said pointedly. “His conduct and his behavior, they are a reflection of his boss.”

Born

18 September 1973 in Lowell, Massachusetts

Career

Masters in political science at American University, 1997. Campaign manager for New Hampshire senator Bob Smith 2002. Lobbyist at the New England Seafood Producers Association, 2003-04. Director at Americans for Prosperity campaign group, 2008-15. Trump campaign manager from January 2015

They say

“He leaves me alone, but he knows when to make his presence felt” (Donald Trump). “A formidable adversary or an incredible ally, whatever the issue is” (Andy Sanborn, New Hampshire state senator)

He says

“Anybody who thinks that they are going to be able to dictate what Mr Trump should or shouldn’t do doesn’t understand the unparalleled success that he has had across his life”

High point

Trump praised Lewandowski’s ground game in his victory speech at the New Hampshire primary

Low point

Charged with battery on reporter Michelle Fields

Additional reporting by Ben Jacobs in Washington