Reality Show Traps Two Senators on a Desert Island. Why Stop There?

Republican Arizona Sen. Jeff
Flake simply
cannot get enough of desert islands. He keeps popping off to
them to get away from it all and work on his survival skills. You
never know when the ability to start a fire might be useful to end
a boring subcommittee hearing.

But his latest stunt is dragging a senator from across the aisle
with him and filming what happens for reality television. A new
show for the Discovery Channel, called Rival Survival, is
sending Flake and Democratic New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich to a
remote location in the Marshall Islands. The Hollywood
Reporter
notes:

The duo will be given a modest choice of items from which they
can select only three. They’re forced to use the limited resources
and work together as they attempt to spear fish, build shelter and
find enough water to survive for a week on Eru in the Marshall
Islands, where the reefs alone are littered with venomous
stonefish, lionfish and scorpion fish.

Flake is a conservative republican who served in the U.S. House
of Representatives for six consecutive terms, from 2001-13, before
he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He’s a reformer who has backed
immigration reform. Heinrich, meanwhile, is a conservationist and
strong progressive and a member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural
Resources Committee who backs education, health care and Social
Security. The duo is described as being polar opposites and were
often at odds in the Senate.

Eru, meanwhile, is home to the wreckage of downed WWII aircraft
and the largest shark sanctuary in the world with more than 2
million square miles of protected waters.

So far they only appear to have done this one episode (which
will air Oct. 29), but they’re hoping for a series. Sadly, the way
the Reporter describes it, they won’t continue on sending
legislators off into the wilderness and out of our hair. They’ll be
looking for other volunteers and they aren’t even all that
committed to the concept of sticking only to “rivals.”

Back in 2012, we classified Flake as one of the more libertarian-leaning
candidates for office, and ReasonTV interviewed him in 2011.
Watch below: