A Bogey For Nickles?

By: Lloyd Grove

Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles - a longtime Trent Lott rival who has called on fellow Republicans to consider ousting the embattled Mississippian as the Senate's GOP leader - might have some explaining of his own to do about his membership in the men-only Burning Tree Club.

We hear that Senate Minority Whip Nickles, who announced Sunday that Lott's Strom Thurmond gaffe "may jeopardize his ability to enact our agenda and speak to all Americans", is a fixture at the prestigious Bethesda club that enforces Saudi-like rules when it comes to females: No women are allowed - not as members, not even as guests.

The club's leadership is so committed to its 80-year policy of excluding women - who are banned from the premises except during the annual spring cocktail party and by-appointment-only Christmas shopping in the pro shop - that in the 1980's it was willing to forgo a multimillion-dollar tax break from Montgomery County to preserve its gender purity.

Yesterday Nickles' press secretary, Gayle Osterberg, confirmed that her boss, a scratch golfer, is a Burning Tree member. But she refused to comment further. We hear that the club, once a favorite golfing venue for Presidents (but now off-limits to Bush administration officials), claims among its well-heeled denizens one other Senator, Republican John Warner of Virginia, as well as former House Republican leader Bob Michel, Hollywood lobbyist Jack Valenti, and CBS News Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer. Former Democratic senator Sam Nunn, who resigned with a flourish in the early 1990's when he was considering running for President, has been spotted there in recent years, but Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a member of the posh Chevy Chase Club, refuses to golf at Burning Tree because of its discriminatory policies.

"The membership tends to be very old", said a source familiar with the facility. "It gives these fellows in their seventies and eighties a place to go. It's really an adult day-care center." Another man told us about his experience as a guest: Not only were septuagenarians golfing shirtless, he said, but when his wife arrived to pick him up, she was intercepted in the parking lot and not permitted inside.

Yesterday we unsuccessfully sought reaction to Nickles' Burning Tree membership from GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Sen.-elect Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina. Our call to the club's general manager was not returned.