Story highlights Ted Cruz wooed big donors in Las Vegas this weekend, but GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson has yet to make a commitment

Cruz pitches a bigger tent to a Republican establishment, he is also building a broader financial base than he has ever enjoyed before

Las Vegas (CNN) The friends marched in to a back room here at AquaKnox, a restaurant just off the floor at The Venetian offering "Global Water Cuisine," backslapping and ebullient, having spent more than a year shoulder-to-shoulder raising cash for Ted Cruz -- and finally getting a return on their efforts.

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Then, not 10 minutes later, a separate phalanx of Cruz fans greeted the maître d', few wearing the name tags embroidered with National Finance Committee prestige -- and some of whom have been among his harshest critics.

"We're with the Cruz event," one said as he paced briskly past the greeter.

Technically, they weren't. But in they went to nosh on pistachio macaroons and glasses of wine with the Texas senator, taking their first steps of what Cruz hopes will be a united Republican front in opposition to Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Those steps could not come soon enough: Cruz's hard-line brand of conservatism won him legions of grassroots loyalists, but it has also forced him to depend on a narrow cluster of Republican funders -- mostly from his home state of Texas, and many of whom are new to both presidential fundraising and the 45-year-old's generation.

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