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COLLEEN JENKINSA man running for the Hernando County Commission says a sex enhancement supplement business is run by his wife, not him.
On the campaign trail, County Commission candidate D.W. "Bill" Fagan plugs himself as a knowledgeable businessman with part ownership of two area companies: Patriot Partners, a mortgage banking company, and Waste Away Systems, a trash reduction manufacturer.
The Spring Hill resident has not publicized another business, one the Florida Division of Corporations has listed him as president and the registered agent of for more than a year.
If the company's provocative name, Sweet Secretions Inc., isn't cause enough for Fagan's hesitation, the following reasons might be:
The business sells a natural dietary supplement designed to enhance oral sex.
It has been featured in Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Its sexually explicit Web site links visitors to those magazines and other pornographic sites. And its creators apparently have never heard a crude pun they didn't like.
Yet when asked this week about the company, Fagan denied any discomfort with the business' premise. In fact, he denied any association at all, saying Sweet Secretions has been owned and operated by his wife, Donna, since October 2000.
"I have nothing to do with Sweet Secretions," he said Tuesday. "I just funded it for my wife. It's her business, not mine."
Mrs. Fagan, 62, concurred. "My husband doesn't have anything to do with this," she said.
She said she developed the supplement with the help of an Indiana pharmaceutical company after her husband began taking powerful medication following open heart surgery four years ago.
Many couples experience similar situations as they age and need to take medications that alter their chemical makeup, she said. But she couldn't find anything on the market to counteract the unpleasant changes, so she created the herbal product as a cleansing agent suitable for men and women.
For "less than 69 cents a day!" the product both sweetens users' natural bodily secretions and increases their sex drive with herbs such as alfalfa, horny goat weed and tribulus terrestris, the Web site claims.
Mrs. Fagan isn't sure if any local retail stores carry her supplement. But plenty of area stores carry products with similar ingredients, said Rodney Tuten, a longtime manager at Ansley's Natural Marketplace in Tampa.
Alfalfa is a blood purifier that reduces body odor, and tribulus has been shown to raise testosterone levels, Tuten said. Other sources indicated that horny goat weed has long been considered an aphrodisiac that increases libido in men and women.
As to whether there is a demand for such products, Tuten replied: "Oh, yeah, definitely. As you get older, your libido kind of drops, and people are always out there looking for different things."
The Internet company operates out of the Fagans' Spring Hill home. But Mrs. Fagan, a member of the Democratic Women's Club, said she purposely has kept the business a secret, even from some of her best friends, because she worried that it might be a detriment to her husband's campaign.
"There are a lot of narrow-minded people out there," she said. "I would feel bad if something like this would hurt my husband's chances because he really wants to work.
"This is my little side money type thing. Is somebody trying to make something dirty out of something that isn't dirty?"
Visitors to Sweet Secretions' extensive Web site learn that the supplement was advertised in the March 2002 issue of Penthouse and received a brief mention in a Playboy feature about items of interest to men in May 2001. Links to both magazines are just a click away.
"It wasn't a product endorsement,'' Playboy spokeswoman Lauren Melone said in an interview.
The site also alerts viewers that the company is "always looking for girls to advertise our products." Women who live in the Tampa Bay area are encouraged to send e-mail with the subject "Sweet Secretions Girls."
But Mrs. Fagan said no such group exists.
Only she answers the phones for the company, she said, because most men and women feel more comfortable talking to a woman about sensitive topics.
"There are no girls," she said. "There is nothing sexual about it at all. Never has been, never would be. That's not our ball of wax. It's strictly for help for people."
Fagan, a 59-year-old Democrat and former president of the Spring Hill Community Association, defended his wife's venture and dismissed the suggestion that it could be viewed as unbecoming of an aspiring county commissioner.
"It's up to the individual," he said.
His opponent for the District 1 seat, Republican Jeff Stabins, said he hadn't heard of the Web site until a Times reporter called Wednesday and asked him to take a look.
One viewing was enough, he said.
"I really don't know what to say," said Stabins, a former state representative who teaches at-risk students for the county school district.
"It certainly is provocative. I'm a little old-fashioned, I guess. My campaign doesn't have a Web site."
Researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this story. Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 352 848-1432 or cjenkins@sptimes.com