ALBUQUERQUE — Former New Mexico Senate President Pro Tem Manny Aragon completed a slow-motion fall from grace Wednesday as he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and two counts of mail fraud in a federal courtroom in Albuquerque. With his admission, Aragon cemented the transformation from a man once considered to be one of the most powerful politicians in New Mexico to being a felon.

Aragon, a South Valley Democrat who led the state Senate from 1988 to 2001 and who presided over Highlands University from 2004 through 2006, was indicted last year as prosecutors accused him of pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the $84 million Metro Courthouse construction project in Albuquerque. His plea followed guilty pleas from others charged in the same investigation.

“It’s a sad day for New Mexico government,” said Senate President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, who served with Aragon in the Senate for more than two decades. “I’m greatly disappointed.”

Aragon’s guilty plea gives yet another black eye to New Mexico and its public officials, coming as it does on the heels of several scandals since 2005 that have cast a shadow over how business is done in the state. Advocates on Wednesday said they hoped the plea would bolster a years-long push for ethics reform in a state that is one of a handful in the nation without campaign contribution limits or an independent ethics commission. Supporters have found state lawmakers resistant to legislation to both ideas.

Even as ethics reform advocates tried to tease out the meaning of Aragon’s plea, a more immediate matter is surfacing: Will the prominent Democrat’s guilty plea three weeks before the 2008 general election affect this year’s electoral contests?

University of New Mexico political scientist Lonna Atkeson said she thinks not.

“National issues are so overriding at the moment, it is hard for anything to get through that,” Atkeson said. “Even the candidates are having a hard time getting through. In a different climate maybe it’d influence the elections. Certainly the Republicans will try to gain traction on this.”

Atkeson added that one should look back to how much former state Treasurer Robert Vigil’s conviction on attempted extortion in 2006 affected the contests that year, she said. Not much, was her assessment.

Wednesday’s plea deal carried a bit of historical resonance. It comes roughly two years after Republicans Sen. Pete Domenici and U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson called then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in the weeks before the 2006 general election to ask about progress of the federal investigation into the Metro Courthouse. Aragon was widely considered at the time to be the biggest target of the investigation.

Iglesias later said that he considered those calls as part of the sequence of events that led to his ouster as U.S. attorney.

Neither Domenici nor Wilson would comment on Aragon’s plea deal Wednesday.

Aragon’s plea short-circuited plans to start a federal corruption trial in the weeks leading up to this year’s election. And while Aragon’s troubles were well known, his guilty plea hit hard among those who served with him in the Legislature.

Sen. Dede Feldman, an Albuquerque Democrat, said, “I’m saddened by the whole incident and I’m glad that it is being resolved. What it does point to is that we need to continue to focus on ethics reform, particularly reform of the procurement process.”

Aragon’s guilty plea, of course, is not the first scandal to cast a shadow on the workings of government. Earlier this year a jury convicted a former state deputy insurance superintendent on federal corruption charges. And In 2006, in the weeks leading up to that year’s election, a jury convicted former state Treasurer Robert Vigil of one count of attempted extortion.

“This is just another in a long list of reasons why we need ethics reform in New Mexico,” said Matt Brix of the Center for Civic Policy. “Because of the severity of this situation we hope that it will help break through the deep opposition to ethics reform at the state level.”

Added Steven Robert Allen of Common Cause: “At some point it’s time to wake up and realize we have to change the way we do business here in New Mexico.”

But there were signs that advocates still might find themselves in a tough battle.

“How do you write legislation about being honest,” said Jennings. “That is something you learn, something you have. I don’t know that you can legislate honesty. The things that Manny did were clearly illegal. It was clearly against the law. It doesn’t have anything to do with ethics.”

Senate Minority Whip Leonard Lee Rawson, a Las Cruces Republican, said Wednesday’s guilty plea doesn’t add to the urgency for reform. At the same time, he said he expected some ethics measures to pass during the 2009 legislation session which begins in January, but maybe not limits on campaign contributions.

“The bottom line with Manny is the system worked appropriately,” Rawson said. “Someone did something wrong. Law enforcement and the courts did their job. What would have stopped that?”

Rawson did say he supports an independent state ethics commission with subpoena power and charging authority. But getting all the players, from the governor’s office to legislative leaders, to agree on who gets to appoint members and how much power to give the commission has proved difficult.