Don Nickles

Donald Lee Nickles (born December 6, 1948) is an American politician and lobbyist who was a Republican United States senator from Oklahoma from 1981 to 2005. He was considered both a fiscal and social conservative. After retiring from the Senate as the longest-serving senator from Oklahoma up until that point, he founded the Nickles Group, a lobbying firm.

Nickles was born and raised in Ponca City, Oklahoma, the son of Coeweene (Bryan) and Robert C. Nickles. He attended Ponca City public schools graduating from Ponca City High School in 1967. 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 Kansas Army National Guard and the Oklahoma Army National Guard from 1970 until 1976. A formative experience was the distress his family suffered following the 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 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.

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 Ronald Reagan accidentally called him Don Rickles, the American comedian. The president was later told about his mistake and found it very amusing.

Nickles was one of three Senators to vote against the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and one of nine to vote against the confirmation of Stephen Breyer to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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 boards 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.

Nickles and his wife, Linda, have four children.