Mike Pike, self-described ‘cultural warrior’ wants to ‘go in guns blazing’ on vouchers, abortion bans in Iowa Senate

Republican Mike Pike, a plumber and business-owner running for a seat in the Iowa Senate, recently shared his  political views in a town hall event hosted on X (formerly Twitter), including many stances that may be too far for voters in the relatively moderate district he seeks.

Pike is running against Democratic incumbent State Sen. Nate Boulton, a Des Moines resident, in Senate District 20, representing parts of Altoona, Pleasant Hill and Des Moines.

On public schools, teachers, reproductive freedom, and more, he advocates for far-right restrictions and a commitment to culture war issues voters often don’t care about.

“I would go in guns blazing,” he said. “My goal is to make things happen. I’m more of your cultural warrior type. So I would look at things from that perspective.”

Pike explained how he first got involved in activism at the Statehouse to oppose LGBTQ rights, and emphasized his own gender while describing how he’d approach serving in the Iowa Senate.

“We’re about action. We’re about being men. Men that are called to do something,” Pike, who noted he trained to be a men’s pastor, said. “…I’d like to make men great again … And I feel very strongly about men leading.”

Public schools

Pike praised the private-school voucher bill, which redirects taxpayer dollars to private schools, away from public ones.

“Competition has always been a good thing,” he said, saying that it’s crucial for businesses. “And so why not through the K-12 as well? I think that’s only going to strengthen all of schooling.”

In Iowa, private schools have raised tuition prices in response to the voucher program.

In the first year of Iowa’s voucher program—called the Students First Education Savings Accounts—66.3% (or two-thirds) of the 16,757 participants already attended private school. Furthermore, nearly 21% of voucher recipients were entering kindergarten students.

He also said members of public unions—including teachers—are unreasonable and can’t be negotiated with.

Boulton voted against school vouchers and the bill that reorganized how Area Education Agencies—which support students with special needs—work. Boulton has also supported public-sector unions and comes from a family of union members. 

In a later section talking about private sector unions, Pike voiced his doubts about unions overall.

“So you know, we can try and approach the unions and talk reason into them. But as we talked earlier in this conversation, it’s pretty hard to reason with somebody who’s entirely unreasonable,” he said.

Reproductive rights

Pike, a father of six, said he believes life begins at conception, and that abortion should be banned without any exceptions. 

“I don’t know if anyone’s watched videos of when an egg is, you know, well—the egg and the sperm ultimately clumps together and there’s a big there’s a big flash of life or of light. And they say that’s, you know, sure, it’s a flash of magnesium or something like that, but in reality that’s that’s when life begins. At that point on, frankly, is when that is a living human being at that point, it is just it’s it’s growing,” he said.

That stance means survivors of rape and incest would be forced to carry pregnancies to term, and people who have medical emergencies that put their lives in danger might not be allowed the medical treatment to save their lives.

“I’m totally for protecting life at a very, very early point in the pregnancy. I would certainly vote for that,” Pike said.

Pike said Iowa’s current near-total ban—which bans abortion before most people know they’re pregnant—doesn’t go far enough, and compared abortion to giving an 8-year-old up for adoption.

Pike also blamed workforce shortages on women getting abortions and not having children. Banning abortion and forcing women to carry pregnancies to term, he said, is crucial to having a strong workforce and society.

“We see massive shortages in health care and workers in retirement communities and so on and so forth, and that’s because, hey, how many tens of millions did we kill off?” he said. “You can’t just abort a bunch of children and then say ‘everything’s fine.’”

Boulton voted against the near-total abortion ban and other attempts to ban abortion. He has supported other efforts to protect reproductive rights such as access to birth control. 

Marriage equality

On his website and in the online town hall, Pike said same-sex marriage protections should be eliminated.

From his website: “I stand behind the repeal of the federal Respect for Marriage Act that protects same-sex marriages. I believe in the importance of traditional marriage and feel that states should have the authority to define marriage according to their values and beliefs.”

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Iowa since 2009. 

In 2023, a Republican in the Iowa House introduced two bills to make same-sex marriage illegal. Neither went anywhere. 

Motivated to run to restrict LGBTQ rights

Repeatedly in the town hall, Pike said he wanted to push back against reproductive rights, public schools, and minorities in Iowa. He decided to run because questions about LGBTQ rights keep coming up at the Iowa Capitol.

Multiple times in the town hall, he suggested protecting the rights of transgender Iowans is immoral and bad for Iowa.

“I don’t think gender reassignment is anything good for society,” he said. “What we don’t need is to encourage behavior that, one: it’s not good for them and, two: isn’t good for society at large.”

Protecting freedom, he said, requires hard work to control abortion, LGBTQ rights, and other culture war boogeymen. A few times, he mentioned bills that were introduced but didn’t get accepted in the Republican-dominated legislature, and vowed to push them through.

“I do think we still need to make progress in other areas,” he said. “Such as, you know, abortion and the transgender agenda and so on and so forth.”