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Don Nickles
From SourceWatch
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Don Nickles is the founder, CEO and chair of the lobbying firm the Nickles Group. According to the firm's website, Nickles "supervises the firm's government relations and consulting practices, and oversees the management of business development and client issues." [1]
Nickles served as a Republican member of the U.S. Senate for 24 years, including a stint as Assistant Minority Leader. He's also a co-founder and member of the Oklahoma Coalition for Peace through Strength.[2]
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Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council
Nickles is an alumnus of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). During the time that he was Assistant Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, ALEC began a new alumni forum for former members who serve in public office, called the "ALEC Alumni Forum." It was launched in 2001 and is "charged with developing a national forum to encourage improved communications among current and former ALEC members. Alumni Forum activities will include special investigations and speaking engagements at major ALEC events, and joint policy members with state and national leaders. . . . Through the Alumni Forum program, ALEC will seek the support of its former members in the development of reforms that reflect the principles of the organization at all levels of government."[1]
ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) They fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. Learn more at ALECexposed.org.
Lobbying in health reform debate
As a former Senator, Nickles, a Republican from Oklahoma, helped negotiate the final version of Medicare Part D (which covers payment of prescription drugs), then left to form his own lobbying firm. Bristol-Myers Squibb paid Nickels' lobbying firm $120,000 by October, 2009 to lobby for, among other things, “health care reform issues related to Medicaid and Medicare.”[2]
- Director, Christian Freedom International [3]
- Director, Valero
- Congressional Advisory Board, Center on Regulation and Economic Growth
- Susan B. Anthony List: Executive and Advisory Committee's
- Director, American Council for Capital Formation [4]
Bio
Records and Controversies
Iraq War
Nickles voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq in Oct. 2002.
Resources and articles
Related Sourcewatch articles
- Government-industry revolving door
- Center on Regulation and Economic Growth
- National Coalition for Peace through Strength
References
- ↑ American Legislative Exchange Council, 2001 Annual Report, organizational report, 2002
- ↑ Olga Pierce Medicare Drug Planners Now Lobbyists, with Billions at Stake ProPublica, October 20, 2009
- ↑ Directors, Christian Freedom International, accessed August 10, 2008.
- ↑ Directors, American Council for Capital Formation, accessed May 9, 2010.
