Daniel Wesley "Dan" Richey (born October 31, 1948) is a Baton Rouge-based political consultant for "pro-family" candidates and organizations, including Louisiana Family Forum. From 1997 to 2004, Richey served under appointment of Republican Governor Murphy J. "Mike" Foster, Jr., as director of the federally funded Governor's Program on Abstinence.[1]
Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) is a social conservative non-profit advocacy group based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The organization supports Louisiana's covenant marriage law and opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. The group's stated mission is to "persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence on issues affecting the family through research, communication and networking." According to its website the group "maintains a close working relationship with Focus on the Family and Family Research Council" and is part of a network of individual state Family Policy Councils.
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States; the other is its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
Abstinence is a self-enforced restraint from indulging in bodily activities that are widely experienced as giving pleasure. Most frequently, the term refers to sexual abstinence, or abstinence from alcohol, drugs, or food.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with its rival, the Republican Party. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Democratic Party was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.
The Louisiana House of Representatives is the lower house in the Louisiana State Legislature, the state legislature of the US state of Louisiana. The House is composed of 105 representatives, each of whom represents approximately 42,500 people. Members serve four-year terms with a term limit of three terms. The House is one of the five state legislative lower houses that has a four-year term, as opposed to the near-universal two-year term.
Abortion is the ending of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or spontaneous abortion. When deliberate steps are taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion, or less frequently "induced miscarriage". The unmodified word abortion generally refers to an induced abortion. A similar procedure after the fetus has potential to survive outside the womb is known as a "late termination of pregnancy" or less accurately as a "late term abortion".
Ferriday is a town in Concordia Parish in northeastern Louisiana, United States. The population, which is three-fourths African American, was 3,511 at the 2010 census.
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system on the North American continent, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. Its source is Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and it flows generally south for 2,320 miles (3,730 km) to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is entirely within the United States; the total drainage basin is 1,151,000 sq mi (2,980,000 km2), of which only about one percent is in Canada. The Mississippi ranks as the fourth-longest and fifteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Jimmy Lee Swaggart is an American Pentecostal evangelist.
Richey is one of five children born to Verne Richey (1914–1993) of Beauregard Parish and his wife, the former Johnnie McIntire (1919–1996) of Baton Rouge. After World War II, the Richeys settled in Ferriday because Verne became the business manager for the Concordia Parish School Board. Mrs. Richey was a sixth-grade teacher. Verne and Johnnie Richey are interred at Magnolia Cemetery in Beauregard Parish.
Beauregard Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 35,654. The parish seat is DeRidder. The parish was formed on January 1, 1913.
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
Concordia Parish School Board is a school district headquartered in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, United States.
At Ferriday High School, Richey set the school scoring record in basketball. He was the first freshman and four-year starter in the history of the school. He was also first-string All-District for his last three seasons. One of his Ferriday classmates, Rick Nowlin, later served in the Louisiana House from Natchitoches and as the first elected president of the Natchitoches Parish Commission.
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball through the defender's hoop while preventing the opposing team from shooting through their own hoop. A field goal is worth two points, unless made from behind the three-point line, when it is worth three. After a foul, timed play stops and the player fouled or designated to shoot a technical foul is given one or more one-point free throws. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins, but if regulation play expires with the score tied, an additional period of play (overtime) is mandated.
Rickey L. "Rick" Nowlin is a Natchitoches engineer, businessman, and politician who is the first ever president of the reorganized Natchitoches Parish government.
Natchitoches is a small city and the parish seat of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, United States. Established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis as part of French Louisiana, the community was named after the indigenous Natchitoches people.
In 1965, Richey was elected president of the Kiwanis-sponsored Key Club International, a high school service organization. He traveled some 30,000 miles (50,000km) during his senior year to attend Key Club activities and conventions.[5]
Kiwanis International is an international service club founded in 1915 in Detroit, Michigan. It is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, and is found in more than 80 nations and geographic areas. Since 1987, the organization also accepts women as members. Membership in Kiwanis and its family of clubs is more than 600,000 members. Each year, Kiwanis clubs raise more than US$100 million and report more than 18.5 million volunteer hours to strengthen communities and serve children.
Key Club International, founded in 1925, is the oldest service program for high school students. Often referred to as simply Key Club, it is a student-led organization whose goal is to encourage leadership through serving others. Key Club International is a part of the Kiwanis International family of Service Leadership Programs (SLPs), specifically the Kiwanis Youth Programs (KYPs). Many local Key Clubs are sponsored by a local Kiwanis club.
In the fall of 1972, Richey entered the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law in New Orleans. In his second year, he was on the undergraduate faculty as an instructor in physical education. He obtained his law degree in 1975.[5]
Election to the Louisiana House, 1975
A month after he finished law school, Richey announced his candidacy for the state House of Representatives, District 21. Incumbent J. C. "Sonny" Gilbert of Sicily Island in Catahoula, who is also a former state senator, did not seek reelection and supported Richey. The all-Democratic field included Gilbert's predecessor, the late Representative David I. Patten, a construction company owner from Harrisonburg, the seat of Catahoula Parish, John Young of Jonesville (also Catahoula Parish), and Troyce Guice, a Ferriday businessman originally from St. Joseph in Tensas Parish who then resided in the neighborhood near the Richeys. According to Richey, Guice was the candidate of the Concordia Parish sheriff, and Patten was the choice of the Catahoula Parish sheriff. John Young was the preferred candidate of state Senator James H. "Jim" Brown, of Ferriday, a floor leader for Governor Edwin Washington Edwards and the father of Campbell Brown. Using the slogan "No Strings Attached", Richey ran first in the primary and, with Gilbert's support, defeated Patten in the general election, popularly called the runoff, by a margin of some 57-43 percent.[5]
Election as state senator, 1979
In 1979, Richey won the open Senate seat previously held by Jim Brown, who would be elected secretary of state. The six-parish district had candidates from five parishes – Richey (Concordia), Patten again (Catahoula), State Representative Neal L. "Lanny" Johnson (Tensas), Assistant District Attorney Jimmie C. Peters (La Salle), and Democratic National Committeewoman Mary Lou Trawick Winters (1935-2014), a native of Monroe living in Caldwell Parish with her husband, Dr. Harry Hall Winters III (1927-2019), an Alabama native practicing medicine in Columbia and thereafter residing in retirement in Metairie in Jefferson Parish.[6]
Peters' boss and law partner was District Attorney (and former U.S. Representative) Speedy O. Long of Jena. Peters thereafter became a judge of the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals. No candidate came from Franklin Parish.[5]
Richey recalled that he met in Columbia with former Governor John McKeithen, who had been instrumental in Winters's election as national committeewoman. Richey found that the two were "apparently ... on the outs ... at the time of our election. At one meeting ... he suggested that I make a big push with black voters by informing them that 'Mary Lou Winters was a member of not one, but two Lily-white country clubs.' That exact line appeared in campaign letters from me to black voters in the waning days of the election." Richey ran first in the primary and defeated Mrs. Winters in the second balloting, 58-42 percent.[5] Prior to the Senate election, Winters, a graduate of Louisiana State University, had been the chief lobbyist for the Louisiana State Medical Society, in which capacity she worked pro bono in 1975 to obtain passage of legislation to protect the medical profession against questionable lawsuits. Winters served for thirty-two years on the Democratic National Committee and attended all of the presidential nominating conventions during her tenure.[7] In 1996, Winters was an elector for President Bill Clinton, who carried Louisiana in both of his elections. She was later the vice chairman of her state party.[8]
In 1983, Richey was unseated by state Representative William B. "Billy" Atkins of Jonesville, when the Democrat Edwin Edwards scored a landslide over Republican Governor David C. Treen. Atkins had also succeeded Richey in the state House four years earlier. Atkins was succeeded in the House by future Louisiana Secretary of StateAl Ater, also of Ferriday. Richey said that his close identification with Treen worked against him. Atkins was the choice of powerful Louisiana AFL-CIO President Victor Bussie. "Like my colleague from Alexandria, Ned Randolph [later mayor], we were ousted in the Edwards wave of 1983. I lost by about the same margin that I had won on the two previous occasions, 57-43 percent," Richey explained.[5]
Earlier, Richey had warned Edwards that the Ronald W. Reagan election would mean Republican U.S. attorneys, who might launch investigations of the governor and his business and gubernatorial connections: "What better way to protect an incumbent Republican Governor like Dave Treen than by having his chief opponent under investigation or indictment leading up to the 1983 election?[10] Richey was hence prophetic about the later investigations of Edwin Edwards.
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.[5]
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 TreasurerMary Landrieu of New Orleans. Many Republicans charged that Landrieu's narrow victory was based on "phantom voters" from Orleans Parish.[11]
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.[12]
In his freshman year in the legislature, Richey served on the Louisiana House Civil Law Committee that voted "unfavorably" on the unratified Equal Rights Amendment. ERA critics saw the measure as a "federal power grab" that would increase the discretionary powers of federal judges and set aside state laws in regard to the family. Richey worked behind the scenes to convince four fellow committee members, Jock Scott of Alexandria, Michael F. "Mike" Thompson of Lafayette, A.J. "Buddy" McNamara of Metairie, and Lane A. Carson of New Orleans, to withdraw their earlier support for the ERA. The surprise turnaround of the four members, all of whom later switched to Republican affiliation, killed ERA ratification prospects in Louisiana, much to the consternation of feminist backers of the proposed amendment as well as House SpeakerE. L. "Bubba" Henry of Jonesboro in Jackson Parish, who thought that he had placed ERA supporters on the committee.[5]
When the extended deadline for ERA ratification expired, Richey said that the proposed amendment would have been a "radical assault on the Constitution." While the ERA was, in Richey's words, "officially buried", he warned that there would be future battles to "promote a radical social agenda on America."[15]
Other legislative highlights
In his freshman year in office, 1976, Richey worked for passage of the Louisiana right-to-work law, which had been strongly opposed by the AFL-CIO president, Victor Bussie, who for years thereafter called for the repeal of the measure.
In 1980, Governor Treen named Richey as the Louisiana chairman of the White House Conference on Families in the Jimmy Carter administration. In the conference, Richey co-authored with Dr. James Dobson, then of Focus on the Family, the panel's minority report. In February 1981, Richey was the first Louisiana elected official to meet in the White House with newly elected President Ronald Reagan, whom he and Jenkins had both endorsed.
Richey and Jenkins were leaders of the movement to legalize home schooling in 1980. The Louisiana Conservative Union named him "Legislator of the Year" in 1979, and the Shreveport-Bossier Pro-Family Forum accorded him similar recognition in 1980.
Jenkins, Richey, Scott, Carson, and Representatives B.F. O'Neal, Jr., of Shreveport and Clark Gaudin of Baton Rouge formed the Independent Legislative Study Group (ILSG), an informal mix of conservatives who met daily when the House was in session or when important business was pending before committees. "The ILSG enabled us to maximize our fire power against the Edwards machine. We seldom won, but had a good time setting small fires all over the place," Richey recalled.[5]
Out of politics, 1984-1997
After his legislative years, Richey practiced law from 1984 to 1989 in Vidalia, the seat of Concordia Parish, in the firm Koerber and Richey. After five years as a small-town lawyer, Richey decided not to pursue a legal career. Instead, he became the director of development at Magdalen College, a small private institution in Warner, New Hampshire.
In 1991, Richey returned to Louisiana as a basketball coach and teacher at South Beauregard High School in Longville in Beauregard Parish, where his parents were then retired. In 1993, he became the news director/commentator at WBTR-TV (Channel 19) in Baton Rouge, an independent station then owned by Jenkins. He left the station to head the Louisiana's Governor's Program on Abstinence (GPA).[5]
Upholding the value of abstinence
Richey recalled that when he graduated, "there was not a single person at Ferriday High School with venereal disease. There were only two out-of-wedlock births, and both girls married the guys." Richey urged parents to emphasize the transmission of disease from premarital sex, rather than only unintended pregnancy: "For every one teenager who gets pregnant, ten get a disease." The only way to avoid this, Richey contended, is abstinence until marriage.[16]
The GPA is funded by the federal welfare reform act of 1996. According to Richey, congressional Republicans knew that Clinton would sign the welfare-reform measure; so they attached a bill to create an abstinence-only education program and authorized its funding with $250 million over five years. The Louisiana program was a national model acclaimed by Focus on the Family and other pro-family organizations.[17] The 36-week program stresses awareness of sexuality, education, behavioral changes, and physical and emotional health.
As GPA director, Richey spoke throughout the state to seventh and eighth graders. He warned of the dangers of premarital intercourse: "My generation participated in the absurdity of 'free love' and now everyone is under the absurd notion of 'safe sex' … Condoms were advertised as the ticket to the party. The bottom line is that the so-called 'safe sex' message is the wrong message. It is a lie," Richey said.[18]
Richey's appointment spurred the opposition of liberals because he came from a religious, not a health background. "I am a faith-based guy," asserted Richey "but there's a component of faith in every civilized institution and every law, for that matter." Richey noted that under the federal law, religion could not be included as an essential aspect of the program.[19]
The ACLU sues Foster and Richey
Some workers in the program in Slidell in St. Tammany Parish and Lafayette, however, incorporated religious-based themes in the instruction. Therefore, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the GPA for violating the First Amendment "establishment clause". Richey pronounced the suit unfounded and without legal merit because he had already corrected the irregularities cited by the ACLU.[20]
After a 2002 hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Porteous, of Baton Rouge, a Clinton appointee, ordered the abstinence program to halt the allocation of federal funds to organizations or persons who "advance religion in any way in the course of any event supported in whole or in part by GPA funds."[21] Louisiana ACLU director Joe Cook said that Porteous' ruling, which he termed "very well-reasoned, well-written", marked the first successful court challenge to the federal abstinence program.[22]
Governor Foster said that he would take steps to assure that the GPA complied with the law, but he would nevertheless appeal Porteous' decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. "I have always made it clear that the courts will not allow the use of state or federal funds to promote religion. ... It's a sad day when such a worthwhile program is attacked by the very people who are supposed to protect the interests of the citizens of Louisiana," Foster added.[23]
In addition to hosting its own events to promote abstinence, the GPA had then awarded more than $1 million to community groups seeking to promote the same message. Porteous said that the GPA must install an oversight program to monitor the use of its money and to provide written notification to any group that it finds to have misused the funds.[24]
A settlement was reached before the circuit court heard Foster's appeal. The state agreed to require all organizations that received support from the GPA to submit monthly reports verifying that no funds are used to promote religion. GPA officials were also required to conduct quarterly in-person reviews of the organizations that receive funding and to post the following message on its Web site and on promotional materials: "The GPA is a health and education program committed to promoting and publicizing the benefits of abstinence. Under limits imposed by the Constitution, the GPA's funds may not be used for activities, events, or materials that include religious messages or otherwise promote or advance religion."[25]
The GPA was first placed in the Office of Public Health. Foster transferred it to his office in July 1997, when he named Richey to head the operation. Richey was replaced in 2004, when the Democrat Kathleen Babineaux Blanco became governor. She named lifelong Republican, Gail Dignam, as head of the GPA.[26]
Richey's family
Richey met his future wife, Jessie, when he was in law school, and she was an undergraduate at Loyola. They have three sons and a daughter: William Victor Richey (born 1977), Aida Lenn Richey (born 1980), Joseph Daniel Richey (born 1986), and John Paul Richey (born 1991). They are members of St. Agnes Parish in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge. Richey's three brothers are physicians, and his sister is a teacher.[27]
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↑ Finch, Susan; Steve Ritea (2002-07-26). "Judge says religious groups got state abstinence grants - Program ordered to keep closer watch". The Times-Picayune. New Orleans, LA USA. p.B6. A state program to encourage sexual abstinence among adolescents has given money to individuals and groups that promote religion, a practice that violates the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge decided Thursday. Ruling in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Porteous ordered the Governor’s Program on Abstinence to stop giving grants to individuals or groups that use the money to convey religious messages "or otherwise advance religion in any way in the course of any event supported in whole or in part" by the program.
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