After his talk with Trump, the Texas senator and his chief of staff, David Polyansky, then sat down with his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, who sounded him out about his interest in filling the Supreme Court vacancy created by the late Antonin Scalia. Cruz — widely considered one of the best Supreme Court litigators of his generation — swatted down the idea, according to four people to whom he has relayed the conversation…
Those ties have helped to foster a far more productive relationship between Cruz and Trump than many had expected. During his visit to Trump Tower in November, Cruz discussed two pieces of legislation with Trump’s team, and they agreed to push forward on them together. The first is a constitutional amendment Cruz introduced earlier this month along with Florida Congressman Ron DeSantis, that would limit senators to two terms and congressmen to three. The second, the Super PAC Elimination Act, would allow donors, whose contributions are capped at $2,700 per campaign, to give unlimited sums to federal political candidates…
Several of Cruz’s closest allies said that despite his deep interest in the law, he turned his back on a potential Supreme Court nomination because he is fundamentally a political creature. “I think the bottom line with Ted is that the monastic life of a Supreme Court justice is simply not something that appeals to him at this stage in his life and that’s notwithstanding the fact that he has already in his young legal career established himself as one of the nation’s premier Supreme Court advocates,” said a longtime Cruz friend. “But being on that side of the lectern is a different thing. He’s an advocate, he’s passionate about advancing the causes he believes in.”
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