Dan Richey - Dan Richey and Woody Jenkins

Dan Richey and Woody Jenkins

Richey met his future legislative colleague Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge through their Key Club activities. When Richey ran for international Key Club president, Jenkins managed the campaign. Jenkins was Richey's unofficial "campaign manager" during the three legislative races and was "Best Man" in Richey's wedding on January 4, 1976, to the former Jessie Valcarcel of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Richey supported Jenkins' Democratic campaigns for the U.S. Senate in the 1978 nonpartisan blanket primary and again in 1980, but Jenkins lost to the popular incumbents, J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., of Shreveport and Russell B. Long of Baton Rouge, respectively. Jenkins, like Richey, switched to Republican registration in 1994. In 1996, Jenkins ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the Senate against the retiring Johnston's preferred choice, former state Treasurer Mary Landrieu of New Orleans. Many Republicans charged that Landrieu's narrow victory was based on "phantom voters" from Orleans Parish.

In the middle 1980s, Richey served as vice chairman of Friends of the Americas, a nonprofit organization founded by Woody Jenkins and his wife, the former Diane Aker. FOA was a "non-political" group which attempted to establish humanitarian programs in Latin America to help the people overcome poverty, natural disasters, or war. The group became a major relief organization with principal operations based in Honduras along the Nicaraguan border.

Jenkins and Richey are members of the Council for National Policy, a conservative think-tank. The group also includes Nelson Bunker Hunt of Texas, Phyllis Schlafly of Missouri, and until his death, Paul Weyrich, a Washington, D.C.-based political activist.