It’s not that Alex Moore thought that being marooned on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean would be easy. It’s just that he assumed he’d have some advantages going in.
Moore, a 27-year-old communications director for Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, is a former class president and high school baseball player who felt good about his gym routine. He was a lifeguard in his hometown of Evanston, Ill., and he’s spent most of the last seven years working in the helter-skelter world of Washington politics.
“Some would say [I’m] the complete package,” Moore joked recently, seated in the Rayburn courtyard several months removed from his stint as a contestant on Season 49 of the CBS reality show “Survivor.” “When you think about it, the chaos that goes on here and how adaptable you need to be applies perfectly to the game.”
Moore was one of 18 contestants — including a rocket scientist, a former reporter, a corrections officer and a Hollywood movie producer — who arrived on a remote Fijian island this past April to compete for a $1 million prize.
For the duration of his stay, Moore had no phone and no access to the outside world; no reliable source of food, other than the scattered coconuts around the beach; no shelter, aside from what he and his teammates could build by hand out of palm fronds and bamboo; and no toothbrush or running water.
And only he and the small group of other contestants, along with those who worked on the show, can say at this point how well those skills translated.
Moore made it through the first episode of the season unscathed, but a teammate was eliminated and he suffered a series of losses in early competitions, including one in which he had to pull a boat to shore through rough coastal waters.
“I’m pushing this heavy boat, and I’m like, ‘What in the world is going on?’” Moore said. “That was what birthed me into the game, kind of just like, oh, it’s not going to be this cakewalk.”
Getting on the show was a dream for Moore, who grew up watching with his parents and applied unsuccessfully once before. But it’s an unusual move for someone in Moore’s position, whose
work in Congress typically requires keeping a low profile — an observation made by many when “Love Is Blind” came to D.C. for its seventh season but did not cast any congressional aides.
“There’s a line that staffers say where it’s like, staffers should never be the story,” Moore said.
Jon Lovett, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, competed in Season 47 of the show and was the first sent home. Others, like Washington Attorney General Nicholas Brown and Texas state legislator Jolanda Jones, have gone on to political careers following appearances on the show. But Moore isn’t aware of another current congressional staffer to appear on “Survivor.”
He was initially concerned that he might be forced to decide between competing and keeping his job, but Schakowsky couldn’t have been more excited for him, Moore said.
“Apparently, surviving the Republican majority in Congress was not a strong enough test for Alex,” Schakowsky said in a statement this summer, calling it a “truly once-in-a-lifetime adventure.”
On the island, Moore opted to keep the specifics of his job to himself, fearing it could jeopardize his chances if someone didn’t agree with him politically.
“I told people that I’m a public affairs consultant. Of course, no one knows what that means,” Moore said.
Though the application process started last September, he didn’t learn he had landed the show until February. It was a precarious moment for congressional Democrats, as President Donald Trump was settling into the White House for his second term. Moore remembers the short turnaround time between a protest with Schakowsky against Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and his final audition in Los Angeles.
“You walk in, and it’s a room of 30 people just staring at you, not saying anything,” Moore said. “I said, ‘Thanks for getting me the hell out of D.C.’”
Luckily, he’s not a coffee drinker, so he didn’t have to struggle through the caffeine withdrawals that hobbled some other contestants. “I have a natural energy,” he said.
But the show took a toll almost immediately. Because of his time in politics, he had confidence in his ability to count votes, but as exhaustion clouded his mind, he became less sure of his whipping skills.
Moore describes himself as “smiley and happy,” but understood he’d need to tap into a darker side of himself to win.
In the first episode, after losing a head-to-head challenge, he muses to the camera, “How do I spin this?” Later in the episode, he double-crosses a teammate, telling her she’s safe while knowing the rest of the group has lined up to vote her out.
“There’s a way to be myself while realizing I’m in a game and being cutthroat,” Moore said. “I pushed myself and did some stuff that I never would have imagined. … There are moments where my family’s going to watch and be like, ‘Who are you?’”
The post What do Congress and ‘Survivor’ have in common? Ask Alex Moore appeared first on Roll Call.
