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WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson's service on the seemingly innocuous House Page Board has brought the Mark Foley scandal into the Albuquerque Republican's hotly contested race for re-election.

Wilson's Democratic opponent, Attorney General Patricia Madrid, charged Monday that Wilson failed to protect the pages from a sexual predator when she was one of five members of the board from 2001-04.

"This board was specifically charged with taking care of the pages," Madrid said.

Foley, a Republican representative from Florida, resigned last week when it was revealed that in 2003 he wrote e-mails to a former House page that described sex acts. It was also reported that House Republican leaders told Foley to stop e-mailing another former House page in 2005 after Foley asked for the teen's photograph.

Wilson campaign manager Enrique Carlos Knell said Wilson did not learn of Foley's misconduct with former House pages until Friday and then immediately called for Foley's criminal prosecution.

"Patsy Madrid's charges go well over the top and don't have any credibility, and she should be ashamed of herself even suggesting such a malicious thing," Knell said.

Madrid told The Tribune: "I don't know what she knew or didn't know (about Foley,) but she didn't do her job."

Madrid said it was known that Foley was close to the pages. She noted Foley gave a speech to the House pages in 2002 in which he talked about taking a page out to dinner.

Knell said Wilson was not present for Foley's speech.

The Madrid campaign was responding to an ABC News report that House pages were "warned" about Foley as early as 2001, which was also the first year of Wilson's term on the page board.

Matthew Loraditch, the president of the House Page Alumni Association, said that when he was a page in 2001 and 2002, supervisors in the House Clerk's Office told pages about Foley. "Don't get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff," Loraditch said he was told.

But in subsequent statements, Loraditch took the position that this fell short of a warning to avoid the Florida legislator.

In an interview, Loraditch told The Tribune: "The supervisors I worked with, if any of them had been told, it would have been dealt with at the time promptly."

Loraditch also said all of the pages who described questionable contacts from Foley said those contacts came after they had left the program.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, on Monday said he and the House Page Board were told that the most recent complaint was only about an "overly friendly" communication and the page's family did not want to lodge a complaint.

The House Page Board was created after a scandal in 1983 in which two members of Congress were censured after admitting having sexual relations with pages. The board includes two members of the majority party, one member from the minority, the clerk of the House and the Senate sergeant at arms.

The failure of oversight has been a theme in both sides of the Wilson-Madrid race.

Wilson has run ads accusing Madrid of failing to investigate corruption in the office of former state Treasurer Robert Vigil, who was acquitted of all but one charge Saturday. Madrid said she never learned of the allegations until the federal charges were unveiled.

Madrid's campaign ads charge that Wilson failed to question the Bush administration about prewar intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Wilson has said she did ask tough questions in classified briefings but was convinced that Iraq did have an active biological weapons program.

During the weekend, Wilson said she would donate to three local charities $8,000 her campaign has received over the years in contributions from Foley's political action committee. She also called for a criminal investigation of Foley's conduct.

The House has 72 pages, 48 selected by Republicans and 24 selected by Democrats from applications submitted by high school juniors. The Senate has 30 pages, 18 selected by the Republicans and 12 by the Democrats.

Pages spend most of their time running errands and carrying messages.

They work for the House Clerk's Office or the Senate sergeant at arms, not directly for congressmen, which makes Foley's close association with the pages so unusual.

Aides in the New Mexico delegation say the only time their bosses have any personal contact with a page is to pose for a photo when the page graduates from the program or to write one a letter of recommendation to a college.

How Republican leaders handled the Foley matter is becoming an issue, too.

Rep. Tom Udall, a Santa Fe Democrat, believes Republican leaders "tried to protect Foley and not the children at risk," said his spokeswoman, Marissa Padilla.

David Host, spokesman for Rep. Steve Pearce, a Hobbs Republican, said the congressman believes the leadership took far stronger action than in the 1983 scandal when Rep. Gerry Studds, a Massachusetts Democrat, was allowed to remain in the House.

"When the House Republican leadership learned about the hideously obscene instant messages that former Rep. Foley had sent, they informed him they would expel him from the House. He resigned within hours," Host said.