Donald Lee Nickles is an American politician and lobbyist who was a RepublicanUnited States Senator from Oklahoma from 1981 until 2005. He was considered both a fiscal and social conservative. After retiring from the Senate as the longest serving senator from Oklahoma, he founded the Nickles Group, a lobbying firm.
Early life
Nickles was born and raised in Ponca City, Oklahoma, the son of Coeweene and Robert C. Nichols. He attended Ponca City public schools. To help pay for their education at Oklahoma State University, he and his wife, the former Linda Lou Morrison, operated Don Nickles Professional Cleaning Service in Stillwater. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Oklahoma State University, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in business administration in 1971. After college, he went to work for Nickles Machine Corporation in Ponca City, a business started in 1918 by his grandfather, Clair Nickles. He became the company's vice president and general manager. He also served in the Oklahoma National Guard from 1970 until 1976. A formative experience was the distress his family suffered following his death of his father, Robert, in 1961, when Nickles was twelve years old. The family had to sell off part of the family business to raise cash to pay the required estate tax. In 1978, aged 29, his election to the Oklahoma State Senate was the beginning of his career in public office. Two years later, at the age of 31, he became and remains the youngest Republican ever elected to the U.S. Senate.
U.S. Senate
Tenure
He sponsored legislation to cut taxes, reduce government spending, promote national defense, and reduce what he believed to be official hostility to religion. He sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act which allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages conducted in other states. As Republican Whip, Nickles called for the resignation of fellow Republican Trent Lott as majority leader after Lott made remarks praising Strom Thurmond that seemed insensitive to the issue of racial segregation. The National Federation of Independent Business praised Nickles for including in the Senate's 2005 budget a provision that would accelerate by one year a complete repeal of the federal estate tax Nickles was one of many Republican senators who in 1981 called the White House to express his discontent over the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor of Arizona to the United States Supreme Court. Nickles said that he and other socially conservative Republican senators would not support O'Connor because of her "presumed unwillingness" to overturn the abortion decision, Roe v. Wade. During a 1986 campaign rally at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, President Reagan accidentally called him Don Rickles, the American comedian. The president was later told about his mistake and found it very amusing.
Leadership
Nickles quickly rose in the Senate Republican leadership, serving as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the 101st Congress; Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee in the 102nd, 103rd, and 104thCongresses; and Assistant Republican Leader from 1996 to 2003. After being term-limited out of the Assistant Leader position, Nickles served in the 108th Congress as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Nickles was also on Bob Dole's short list of vice presidential choices, before Dole finally decided on former CongressmanJack Kemp of New York. In December 2002, Nickles became embroiled in the controversy surrounding Republican Leader Trent Lott. At Senator Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, Lott had made comments that some took to be racially insensitive. As the controversy grew, Nickles went on national television and became the first senator in the Republican leadership to say that Lott should step down. Nickles believed that the controversy over Lott's remarks would distract from the Republican legislative agenda, and as he served as Lott's deputy in the Senate this statement was seen as the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." Despite many apologies for his remarks, Lott stepped down shortly thereafter. Declining to run for the position of Senate Majority Leader himself, Lott was succeeded by Bill Frist of Tennessee. Nickles was re-elected in 1986, 1992 and 1998 and was the senior senator from Oklahoma from 1994 to 2005.
Post-Senate career
On October 7, 2003, he announced that he would not run in the 2004 election. Republican Tom Coburn was elected to succeed Nickles. Nickles went on to found the Nickles Group, a government consulting group in Washington, D.C. He also serves on the board of directors of a number of public companies, such as Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy. Nickles was one of the politicians featured in the film Traffic, giving his opinion on the war on drugs.
