Heavily Disliked Senator Running For President Finally Gets Another Senator Endorsement

It only took until March 10, but finally Texas Senator Ted Cruz has earned the endorsement of one of his Senate colleagues: Utah Senator Mike Lee.

The reason for the lapse in time is no surprise; Cruz is famously disliked by many Washington insiders, and frontrunner Donald Trump has often bashed the Texas Senator for his inability to lock down a single vocal supporter from among his peers. During a Republican debate, Trump slammed his closest rival, saying, “I got along with everybody. You get along with nobody. You don’t have one Republican senator … backing you, not one. You don’t have the endorsement of one.”

Well now, Senator Lee — who reportedly held out from issuing an endorsement due to the friendly nature of his relationships with Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul — is ready to step forward and claim Cruz ain’t so unlikable after all. “It’s not easy to see them fighting,” Lee recently said about his pals Cruz and Rubio going at it.

Lee’s history with Cruz is well-documented, particularly surrounding the controversial 2013 government shutdown that the now-somewhat-less-disliked Cruz helmed. In fact, TIME in October 2013 referred to Lee — not Cruz — and the “man behind the shutdown curtain,” identifying the Utah Senator as the “policy-oriented leader behind the Defund Obamacare movement.”

Senator Lee made his endorsement Thursday afternoon, four days in advance of the next block of key primary voting conventions in Florida, Illinois, and other states.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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