President Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski says he would shed his reputation as a partisan pit bull to become an effective bipartisan champion for New Hampshire in the Senate. But the famously in-your-face Trump ally said he’s worried about the personal cost.
“The truth is, the only hesitation I have is the dishonest media distorting my record … and saying things that are untruthful and putting my family and friends through a smear campaign,” Lewandowski said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
With Trump all but endorsing him, Lewandowski would likely steamroll his Republican rivals in a September 2020 primary before facing Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in November. He has time to decide, with a June filing deadline, but says a decision may come sooner.
Lewandowski, 45, said he’s sticking to a plan to look at third quarter fundraising results of the two declared GOP candidates, retired Gen. Don Bolduc and former state House Speaker Bill O’Brien.
“If they don’t have those resources, it’s going to propel me into the race,” he said.
Perhaps surprisingly, Lewandowski outlines a pan-partisan message, stressing that he would seek to work with Democrats and with an appetite for a fight on behalf of state voters.
“I don’t think there’s enough bipartisan work going on on issues we all agree on,” Lewandowski said, adding it would be “my job and obligation to partner with” the state’s other senator, Democrat Maggie Hassan.
In a Senate full of GOP Trump skeptics and frenemies, Lewandowski would bring a unique ability to bend the president’s ear.
Last week, while touring northern New Hampshire with Gov. Chris Sununu, Lewandowski offered to dial Trump if needed to help expedite FEMA payouts to small communities that flooded years ago.
This week, Lewandowski lunched with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and talked about opioid abuse.
“I would be a senator who I believe would fight harder than anyone else for their constituents,” he said.
Before working for Trump, Lewandowski had a lower-profile career as the free-market group Americans for Prosperity’s New Hampshire director. He also worked previously as a seasonal policeman.
His bipartisan pitch for purple-state voters includes ensuring access to healthcare and safe infrastructure. He also believes there’s room for bipartisanship on making the U.S. immigration system merit-based, though Democrats largely have balked.
Lewandowski said policies to reduce opioid abuse would be a top goal.
Opioid addiction has “impacted members of our family and friends of ours and we need to do better,” he said, adding that often “you don’t realize at first” that a person has a problem, and that once it’s apparent, it’s very difficult to overcome.
On some hot-button issues, he takes a cautious stance, such as marijuana legalization, which divides the state’s Republicans. New Hampshire is encircled by Canada and three states that legalized the drug. Lewandowski said he would defer to the state legislature, but backs federal legislation to allow access to banking for the state-legal pot businesses.
Still, while Lewandowski entertains a run, he said “smears” are a true concern, and that three years in national headlines haven’t given him a coat of Teflon. He said news outlets have recently questioned whether he actually lives in New Hampshire — where his four children attend public school — and in one case allegedly edited a quote he offered.
Lewandowski said he feels particularly burned by coverage of his March 2016 encounter with then-Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields at a rally, which resulted in a battery charge that prosecutors dropped. He said he was tired of interacting with the journalist, and that any lessons learned from the episode were not about his own conduct.
“The lesson learned was the media is very dishonest. The only words that came out of my mouth were ‘excuse me’ and ‘thank you’,” he said. “I was chastised and wrongly accused of things … The media used that to attack me because they wanted to attack Trump.”
