Voters in Senate District 20 — which covers parts of East Des Moines, Pleasant Hill, South Ankeny and Altoona — will decide whether to reelect Democratic Sen. Nate Boulton or his Republican challenger, Mike Pike.
Boulton, 44, was first elected to the Iowa Senate in 2016 and is seeking his third term. He currently is the Democratic Whip and was chair of the Iowa Workers Compensation Advisory Committee. Boulton works as an attorney practicing labor law and currently lives in East Des Moines.
IPR News has been reaching out to candidates in some key Statehouse races to ask them about their positions on important issues. Here is what Boulton had to say. Pike did not respond to IPR’s interview requests. Boulton’s answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Jump to a specific topic:
- Top legislative priority
- Eliminating the income tax
- Abortion rights
- Fertility treatments and contraception
- Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)
- Growing the state's workforce
What is the most important thing the Legislature should do in the next session?
Boulton: One of the key things that we have to look at in Iowa is what we are going to do to support and expand our workforce.
It starts with public education – making sure we have world class schools, preparing people to lead our economy in our state into the future. It also involves making sure we do the things we need to do to support workers in their jobs so they can balance life and have a family and a quality of life to go with successful occupations. Things like paid family leave have been a major priority for me in my service in the Legislature – doing the things we can do to grow wages to make Iowa an attractive destination for new workers and help us keep young people here for the long term.
The workforce shortage is a big deal, and we need to really get aggressive about how we're going to make sure we can deliver a strong future for Iowa by having a vibrant workforce here.
Gov. Kim Reynolds has said it is her goal to eliminate the income tax in Iowa by the end of her current term. Do you support eliminating the income tax? How should the state adjust other taxes to make up for that revenue?
Boulton: I support targeted tax relief that gets tax benefits to the people who need it most. Working class Iowans who need help getting through their daily lives — supporting their families — are the ones who we need to focus on making sure that they get the tax relief that they deserve.
The biggest answer to that question is dealing with a tax policy that makes sense. Right now, the thing that doesn't make sense about Iowa's tax policy is having working class Iowans paying more than their fair share while we have massive corporate tax credits, exemptions and giveaways going out to some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet with sometimes very little return on the investment here in Iowa. We've got to get a handle on that situation.
In a 2023 special session, the Legislature passed — and the Iowa Supreme Court later upheld — new abortion restrictions. The law prohibits an abortion once the presence of cardiac activity is detected by ultrasound. That can happen as early as six weeks, when some people are still unaware of their pregnancy.
What action if any should the legislature take to change Iowa’s abortion restrictions?
Boulton: The reality is, the law as it exists now outlaws almost all access to abortion care in our state. But more importantly than all of that, is if we see the next steps coming here, the next steps would involve eliminating access to IVF for families, outlawing contraceptives. Those are the things that really are consequences if this thing goes any further than where it's at right now. The situation right now is not acceptable, but it should be really a concern for every Iowan to see where the next steps would take us in this.
I think we should codify Roe v. Wade and bring back a meaningful standard of abortion access and restriction policy that follows what we have had for 50 years of precedent in our state and in our nation.
With Iowa’s abortion law in place that bans most procedures after six weeks, what, if anything, does the Legislature need to do to ensure access to fertility treatments or contraception?
Boulton: I think that it goes back to the concept of just codifying Roe v. Wade and continuing the long standing precedents that we have had in our state and our nation – of that being the law of the land and that guiding our health care policy in relation to reproductive health care services and abortion. That is the best way to make sure we don't have unintended consequences of threatening access to IVF and other very meaningful things that can be done to help families looking to expand and grow.
Next year, the state’s Education Savings Accounts that families can use to send students to private schools will be available to anyone, regardless of income. Should there be a cap on what the state is willing to spend on ESAs?
Boulton: First and foremost, I think it was a mistake for the state to get involved in taking dollars that were meant for public education and shifting them into private school tuition. That has been a bad policy for our state to initiate, and has had an impact in our school districts as they try to manage their budgets and deliver great education in our community schools.
If the argument for implementing a voucher system or Education Savings Accounts was to increase access to private education, having uncapped unrestricted access to those dollars as tuition money for wealthy Iowans does nothing to improve access to private school education. The end result is we have resources that are desperately needed in our community school districts being distracted away from that core mission of making Iowa an exceptional leader in public education.
Should the Legislature have a role in making sure private schools that get this state funding don’t rapidly raise tuition rates?
Boulton: Yes, the state should have a role in making sure that if we're going to have these education vouchers out there, that they are doing actual good in the community. Right now, this policy was left so open that you can easily see how it will have negative consequences even towards its objective. Having tuition increases that match the amount of a voucher doesn't help anyone get access to private school education if they want it. It only keeps it further away from them.
The accountability factor — making sure if schools are going to be receiving these public dollars going into the private school for tuition, making sure that they're offering comparative levels [of] special needs education services, [that they] are doing the things that our public schools are told that they are required to do for accepting public resources — that should be the same standard when we look into private school education. If this line is going to be crossed, it has to be done fairly.
What more should the Legislature be doing to grow and improve the state’s workforce?
Boulton: It starts fundamentally with how we educate our workforce, and is followed by how we treat our workforce. When we see policies that make it harder for our public schools to deliver exceptional education, that has a consequence in having the most educated, skilled, productive workers in the world to be able to offer that as an incentive for employers to come here and be a part of our economy.
When we have policies that undermine people's rights in the workplace, lessen the benefits they get when they're injured on the job, constricting the number of weeks of unemployment benefits people can get when there's a plant closure – those things don't show workers that they are valued in this state. Instead, if we can shift the focus to doing things like paid family leave, to committing ourselves to wage growth and quality job initiatives, those things matter in how we build our workforce the right way and can propel Iowa's economy into the future the best way we possibly can think of.
