Albuquerque city councilor Dan Lewis announced Sunday that he will run for Congress in the 1st Congressional District. Lewis is the first announced candidate for the seat.

Lewis, a Republican, announced the day after incumbent Martin Heinrich announced his intention to run for Senate. The business owner declared his candidacy in Albuquerque’s Old Town.

The Albuquerque Journal reported that Lewis entered the race “to help small businesses, so they can create badly needed jobs, and to protect our nation and our people from those who wish us harm.”

The 1st Congressional District is in central New Mexico, based around Albuquerque, and is considered New Mexico’s swing district. Heinrich was the first Democrat to represent New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District and was reelected in 2010.

Lewis is the first announced candidate for the seat though two prospective candidates have formed exploratory committees.

Barela also trails in cash on hand through June 30. Barela had $536,000 cash on hand as of the end of June, while Heinrich had more than twice that; Heinrich has $1.3 million cash on hand.

“We’re challenging the status quo in Washington, and it feels great,” Barela said in a statement. “I’m honored to have received the support of so many New Mexicans who simply feel that it’s time for new and independent leadership in Congress.”

Barela is attempting to regain the 1st Congressional District for Republicans. Heinrich is the first Democrat to hold the seat, thoug there were several close calls, including in 2006 when then-Rep. Heather Wilson eked out a victory over Patricia Madrid by less than 1,000 votes.

The only bad news for Heinrich is that the poll of 418 likely voters, conducted by the Albuquerque firm Positive Contacts Consulting, found a small uptick for White. In another Monahan-commissioned poll last week, White had just under 41 percent. The latest automated telephone poll had a margin of error of nearly 5 percent.

As a stand-alone snapshot of the race, this week’s poll may not be particularly significant. More important is that it reflects the same approximate standings as Monahan’s poll last week (52-41), as well as as those of a late-August poll conducted for the Washington, D.C., newspaper Roll Call, which gave Heinrich a 51-46 percent advantage.

The Albuquerque Journal poll earlier this month gave Heinrich a smaller lead, 43-41 percent, with 16 percent undecided.

Heinrich and his supporters know better than to celebrate, however. The last Dem to try for CD1, Patricia Madrid, enjoyed a comfortable lead in the last weeks of her race against Republican incumbent Rep. Heather Wilson, only to lose by fewer than 1,000 votes.

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.