The main tropes and mechanisms of “reality” television lend themselves awfully well to the world of politics. Just take Survivor (the groundbreaking series produced by Mark Burnett, who, tired of living in jungles while filming, would go on to create a New York-based show called The Apprentice). What is Survivor but an endless, ruthless game of badmouthing and backstabbing perpetrated by ever-shifting factions, with all that tiresome positioning punctuated by the occasional vote booting someone out of the game? In other words, politics. Given the similarities of the genres, it ought not come as a surprise that The Donald isn’t the only reality TV performer to try to climb the greasy pole.
Ben Higgins made his name recently on one of the creepier reality shows, ABC’s The Bachelor, where he whittled down the opening harem to now-fiancée Lauren Bushnell. (The scorned also-ran of that season, JoJo, is the current “Bachelorette,” working her way through a herd of hunky suitors.) Higgins has another TV show in the works—he’s said to be filming, with his intended, a new series called Ben and Lauren: Happily Ever After, all about their life in Denver. It looks like that life will include Higgins on the campaign trail, as he has filed to run as a Republican for a seat in the Colorado house. He’ll need all the celebrity he can muster, as northwest Denver’s District 4 is solidly Democratic. Then again, he’ll be running against an incumbent, Dan Pabon, who recently copped to driving under the influence. (“Is there any way we can avoid this possibility?” Pabon said, in best incumbent fashion, to the officer who stopped him back in March.) We’ll see who Denver voters choose to give a rose to and who they send home.
Over in Oklahoma, Jet McCoy is running as a “Common Sense Conservative” for a seat in the state senate. McCoy and his brother appeared in three seasons of the CBS series The Amazing Race. (They were the rodeo-cowboy siblings with the cornpone propensity to say “Oh my gravy!”)
Here’s hoping he does better than Trump’s frequent Apprentice hopeful, Omarosa, did when she tried her hand at politics. Two years ago she ran for a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District board. The candidate who came out on top in the open primary won 44.3 percent of the vote. That wasn’t Omarosa: She came in next to last with 5.3 percent. Though Trump repeatedly fired her on his TV show, Omarosa is now working for the Republican nominee as his director of African-American outreach.
Reality actors can make it. Way back in the 1990s, before reality TV had ossified into a string of predictable and excruciating conventions, Sean Duffy appeared on the MTV series The Real World. By 2002 he was appointed a district attorney in Wisconsin. And in 2010 he won election, as a Republican, to the House of Representatives. It’s clear that he learned a skill on The Real World that he put to use recently: In declaring that Trump will “make America great again,” he proved he has the ability to stand in front of a camera and say silly things without embarrassment.
