Allen Weh is in an uphill battle against Democratic senator Tom Udall in New Mexico, but he is untroubled by news today that beloved Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin is helping Udall’s reelection campaign.
“I don’t even know who that guy is,” Weh tells National Review Online. “I never heard of those books, and I haven’t seen that TV show.”
Does that mean Weh won’t be bringing in Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins to help his own campaign? “I don’t even know who that is,” Weh adds.
Martin, whose Song of Fire and Ice series was adapted into the popular HBO series, announced Thursday that he will hold a $250-per-person fundraiser for Udall October 7 at a personal movie theater he owns in Santa Fe. The event will reportedly include a $1,000 “exclusive V.I.P. meet and greet,” a $2,000 dinner, and a chance for one winner to “ask them anything” — a powerful inducement for fans eager to learn new developments in the fantasy series.
Udall hardly needs the help. He has consistently led Weh by double digits, though the Republican challenger has begun to move the needle in recent weeks. The New York Times deems Udall’s seat 99 percent safe, a perception Weh says overestimates the blueness of a state with a popular Republican governor who appears headed to an easy reelection. He notes that the last two Senate races in New Mexico — Martin Heinrich’s defeat of Heather Wilson in 2012 and Udall’s 2008 landslide over Steve Pearce — occurred during presidential election years when the Obama campaign apparatus was heavily deployed in the Land of Enchantment.
“So the last two elections were really bad, and people only see those last two,” Weh says. “People can read the tea leaves the wrong way.” He adds that in summer 2013, Udall showed a 22-percent lead against a hypothetical Republican. Weh entered the race in January, and while he has not wiped out that deficit, he says recent polls have shown a gap in the low teens, with strong swings toward Weh among independent voters (who favored Udall by 36 percent earlier in the year but by only 3 percent in the latest Albuquerque Journal poll). Weh says within the next few days he expects to announce that “we’re in single digits.”
But he has never heard of George R. R. Martin. One explanation for Weh’s pop-culture lacuna may be that he has been busy with the charter aviation business he started in 1979 and built into a multi-million-dollar company. Weh also had a distinguished career in the Marine Corps, entering as an enlisted man and later qualifying for OCS. He served two tours in Vietnam and retired as a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, having been awarded a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. Although he has also served as chairman of the New Mexico Republican party, Weh acknowledges that Udall’s structural advantages have made big GOP supporters reluctant to help what he calls the “Rodney Dangerfield campaign.”
For the record, this reporter has also not seen the Game of Thrones series or read any of the books, and I think Abbey Road was hands-down George Martin’s best work.