Topeka ? A conservative state senator from Wichita, looking to raise campaign funds in a tough Republican Party primary, is boasting about her fight with Kansas University over a human sexuality class.

In a campaign letter, Susan Wagle says she conducted an investigation showing “a Kansas university was spending tens of thousands of tax dollars — your hard-earned money — to purchase explicit films of sexual acts for viewing in undergraduate classes. These same materials are considered so obscene and vulgar that they are illegal for private individuals to possess in their own home.”

Wagle, who gained national attention during the 2003 legislative session by criticizing popular KU social welfare professor Dennis Dailey on the floor of the state Senate, is being challenged by former Wichita mayor and gubernatorial candidate Bob Knight.

A university review of Wagle’s allegations concluded they were baseless.

“I’m running on my record, and that was a high-profile issue,” Wagle said when asked Friday about the fund-raising letter. She said the university her letter referred to was KU.

Truth, lies and headlines

Kevin Boatright, a university spokesman, said Wagle was telling lies.

“KU has no desire to be dragged into the Senate District 30 race by either candidate, but the fund-raising letter that she is using contains numerous inaccuracies and outright misrepresentations of facts,” he said.

Wagle made headlines and attracted Fox News attention after she stood on the Senate floor and denounced KU and specifically Dailey, saying he showed pornographic films and made inappropriate comments in his class on human sexuality.

Dailey, an award-winning teacher whose class “Human Sexuality in Everyday Life” is one of the most popular and heavily attended at KU, denied the accusations.

He and many of his students said the classes included clinically standard films and frank discussions designed to provide education and understanding about sexuality.

Wichita campaign seeks funds here (6-9-04) KU prof revisits sex-class controversy at public forum (2-12-04) More stories on the KU sex class

But Wagle’s accusations became fodder for conservative radio and television.

When the smoke cleared and after an internal investigation, KU said it found no validity to her claims, but the Legislature approved a bill requiring state universities to have policies dealing with the use of sexually explicit materials, sexual harassment and pedophilia.

Primary fight

Now, Wagle faces a well-known challenger in Knight for her Senate seat in the Aug. 3 GOP primary. Knight, a longtime former mayor of Wichita, ran an unsuccessful campaign in 2002 for the Republican Party nomination for governor. The primary winner will face little-known Democrat David Clark Jr., a schoolteacher, in the November general election.

Wagle said the race against Knight was “shaping up to be the toughest fight of my political career.” But she is confident. “I’m going to win big,” she said.

In her letter seeking campaign contributions from Republican supporters, Wagle recounts her version of the fight over the human sexuality class.

She writes that she exposed “a loophole” allowing schools to skirt obscenity laws and that she wrote a law to change that.

“Of course, the liberals went bananas,” she wrote. “Evidently, the left-wingers in Kansas believe classroom pornography is somehow a good idea. It just shows how out of touch they really are.”

KU responds

Dailey, who has taught at KU since 1969, couldn’t be reached for comment.

But Boatright, KU’s interim executive vice chancellor for University Relations, said the materials used in the class in no way cost tens of thousands of dollars, though he didn’t have an exact total. Wagle said someone had told her the dollar figure, but she didn’t recall a name.

Boatright also said Wagle’s assertion that KU was able to retain the films through a loophole in the obscenity law were wrong, and that her descriptions of the films were inaccurate.

“These were old films, the clinical standards for classes of that type,” he said. “We asked the opinions of professors at other universities, and they said they were appropriate for that kind of class.”

Boatright said he didn’t know whether the university would respond directly to Wagle about the letter.

Wagle has steadfastly defended her actions against KU.

Her opponent, Knight, said Wagle’s handling of the controversy was wrong. She should have approached KU first to address her concerns instead of going public, Knight said.

“I don’t understand the benefit of dragging one of the most valuable institutions in the state, even the country, through the mud,” he said. “I don’t understand that style.”

He said he also heard from students who praised the class that Wagle was condemning.