I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The latest volley in the battle between Republican Darren White and former Albuquerque City Councilor Martin Heinrich for New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District is a doozy, with White’s newest TV ad calling his opponent “disgraceful, dishonorable, extreme” based on Heinrich’s environmental work and associations.
Heinrich’s campaign fired back that the ad is “more brazen lies” from White.
But while each statement in the ad has at least a kernel of truth, they don’t add up to the indictment they suggest.
If you haven’t seen it, the ad titled “Extreme” links Heinrich to David Foreman, a co-founder of the radical environmental group Earth First! It notes that Foreman was “convicted of attempting to sabotage a nuclear power plant,” that Heinrich and Foreman “co-founded an extremist group,” that Heinrich “lobbied illegally” and that “now Heinrich’s groups are under federal investigation.”
Whew. Perhaps a few facts are in order.
Foreman was born in Albuquerque in 1947, and apparently had a conservative bent as a youth. While studying history at the University of New Mexico he worked to elect Barry Goldwater president in 1964, and told Sports Illustrated in 1991 that he “still loves the former Arizona senator’s famous statement, ‘Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.’” In 1998, Foreman told Sierra magazine that he still considered himself a Republican.
He spent 61 days in the Marine Corps after college, but got a dishonorable discharge for insubordination and for going AWOL, Sports Illustrated wrote. During the 1970s, he worked for The Wilderness Society in New Mexico, then Washington, D.C., and was on the New Mexico board of The Nature Conservancy during the same period, both groups being in conservation’s mainstream.
Foreman and several friends formed Earth First! in 1979, and at first mixed publicity stunts — such as rolling a plastic “crack” down the face of Glen Canyon Dam — with a more radical view of conservation than groups like the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society. According to news reports, they eventually grew to condone and conduct actions such as spiking trees and sabotaging heavy equipment to discourage logging.
By the late 1980s, members of the group had cut down or sabotaged power line towers and a ski lift near Flagstaff in what the FBI would later call preparation for attacks on nuclear power plants and the Rocky Flats weapons factory. The FBI infiltrated the group and in 1990 brought charges against Foreman and four others. The others pleaded guilty to various acts of sabotage and conspiracy. Foreman pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy — he had given an FBI agent $100 and a manual on how to perform “monkeywrenching.” As part of his plea bargain, his sentencing was deferred to 1996, when the charge against him was reduced to a misdemeanor. He was fined $250.
Foreman disassociated himself from Earth First! in the early 1990s. He helped found The Wildlands Project to preserve wildlife corridors in North America and was its director from 1991 to 2003. He is now the director and senior fellow of The Rewilding Institute, “a conservation ‘think tank’ advancing ideas of continental conservation,” according to its Web site. The institute is based in Albuquerque, but Foreman did not respond to a request for an interview with the Independent.
The White campaign says Heinrich and Foreman worked together in 1997 to create the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, describing the group as “extreme.” The alliance’s Web site says its top issues are reining in illegal off-road vehicle use on public lands, upholding protections on roadless areas of federal lands and working to reform the 1872 mining law.
The Heinrich/Foreman connection had been brought up in August by blogger Mario Burgos, who noted that Foreman and his wife, Nancy A. Morton, have donated to Heinrich’s campaign. A search of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show Foreman giving $100 and Morton contributing $850.
The White TV ad’s reference to Heinrich lobbying “illegally” refers to Heinrich’s failure to get a city business license for his consulting firm, and to allegations Heinrich may have broken lobbying laws for failing to register as a lobbyist. Heinrich has maintained he never worked enough on lobbying to trigger the registration requirement, but has never fully revealed the details of his work at that time.
The reference to “Heinrich’s groups now under federal investigation” cites a Sept. 19 story in the business publication Environment & Energy Daily. It says a U.S. Interior Department inspector general “is investigating possible illegal coordination between lobbyists for environmental groups and federal officials of the National Landscape Conservation System,” basing its story on information from conservative Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop.
The E&E story doesn’t say when the alleged coordination occurred, and representatives of the two groups named, The Wilderness Society and the National Wildlife Federation, said they had not been contacted by investigators.
And the Heinrich connection? According to columnist Jim Scarantino, who worked with Heinrich at the time, Heinrich was paid by groups including The Wilderness Society when he lobbied for creation of the Ojito Wilderness in 2004.
Does all that add up to Heinrich being “disgraceful, dishonorable, extreme,” as White says in the ad? Voters will have their say Tuesday.
