Representative Steve King would consider leaving Congress if offered the right job in Donald Trump’s administration, O.Kay Henderson reported yesterday for Radio Iowa.

While taping this week’s episode of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program,

King cited the Homeland Security agency as a place that might lure him away from serving in the House. Trump did a fundraiser for King’s 2014 reelection campaign, but King wound up endorsing Ted Cruz before the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. Trump mentioned their complicated history this past Sunday [November 6] during the Trump campaign rally in Sioux City.

“Congressman Steve King, great guy,” Trump said. “I even liked him when he was endorsing Ted…It took him a little while, but he came around, right?”

King held out on formally endorsing Trump until shortly after the Republican National Convention. He waited in part because he wanted assurances Trump would seek counsel from “constitutional conservatives” and appoint the right kind of judges to the federal bench. Speaking to a Sioux City crowd in August, King praised the nominee for promising to appoint “those who are strict constructionists in the vein of Justice Scalia, who [running mate] Mike Pence and I both got to call friend.” Trump’s long list of possible Supreme Court nominees includes two Iowa judges.

The administration of a candidate who inspired white nationalists everywhere sounds like a perfect place for King. Maybe he can be in charge of planning the wall along the southern border, a project he advocated long before Trump ran for president.

Henderson noted that Kellyanne Conway has been King’s campaign pollster for 12 years. She managed Trump’s campaign during the final months of the race, so King has a good relationship with at least one person in the president-elect’s inner circle.

King is not in danger of losing a re-election bid in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district, where registered Republicans greatly outnumber Democrats and no-party voters lean more conservative than in eastern Iowa. Nor is he vulnerable to a GOP primary challenge, in my opinion. State Senator Rick Bertrand lost this year’s IA-04 primary by a wide margin. He has indicated he might run against King again, but now that Republicans have a large Iowa Senate majority, I expect Bertrand to seek a third term in the state legislature in 2018.

LATE NOVEMBER UPDATE: King has used his Twitter account to praise Trump and explain how it would be “simple, efficient, & cost effective” to build a wall along the Mexican border.