Sen. Ted Cruz is now focusing on being an ally of President Donald Trump after they had a contentious relationship during the 2016 presidential campaign, The Washington Post reported.
Business and civic leaders let him know that they saw Cruz putting his White House goals ahead of his work as a senator.
"I think he’s learned from that experience," said Houston Texans owner Robert McNair, a longtime Cruz donor.
Cruz once had been Trump's chief rival in the Republican party, and promised to upend the Washington establishment, but now he focuses more on local issues such as redrawing flood-plain maps along the Gulf Coast, expanding airport runways in suburban Dallas, and reauthorizing federal spending on NASA, the Post reported.
Cruz no longer takes aim at Trump, although during the campaign, he said electing Trump could cause the country to "plunge into the abyss." In April, in Time magazine’s annual Time 100 list, Cruz praised Trump, calling him a "flash-bang grenade thrown into Washington by the forgotten men and women of America."
Rep. Beto O'Rourke, Cruz's Democratic challenger for his Senate seat, has targeted Cruz’s national ambitions.
"When did Ted Cruz last hold a town hall in Waco or Pecos or Austin or Amarillo? He hasn’t. His running for the presidency, his ideological extremism, his putting his career and his party over his country and the constituency he was sworn to serve in Texas has come at a terrible cost to our state," O’Rourke said, the Post reported.
Most analysts say Cruz has the advantage in deeply Republican Texas, the report said.
"In Texas, there are a whole lot more conservatives than there are liberals. But that means in November, conservatives have got to show up," Cruz told reporters at a San Antonio appearance, the Post reported.