Illinois Public Media's "The 21st Show" invited both candidates in Illinois' 12th District for a full hour of live radio, with listeners calling in. Democrat Julie Fortier accepted. Mike Bost scheduled 30 minutes, pre-recorded, the station noted.
Because the interview was taped to fit his schedule, nobody could call in live. Listeners sent texts, emails and voicemails instead — "an extraordinary number," host Brian Mackey said. "Too many for the time allotted, and many of you wanted to ask him the same two questions. Why aren't you debating your opponent and why won't you hold an in-person town hall?"
Three of those voicemails aired:
"I wanna know if Mike Bost is ever going to debate Julie Fortier in the upcoming election. We need to see them face off."
"I would like to address Mike Bost and ask him why he refused to debate Julie Fortier."
"The people want to know that they can choose between the two what they both stand for. Please do a debate."
"A small audience"
Here is how Bost answered:
"So when you do a debate, you've got a small group and I can have my time more valuable to my constituents by being out and going to events and going to meet people and going to greet people … go to farm bureau meetings … and gain the opportunity to talk with my constituents one on one. … That means both of us can present our argument without going to a studio to where you only get the small audience."
He said that's how he has campaigned "for quite some time," and "that's what we're gonna continue to do."
That's backwards. A debate is broadcast. It's the one event where every voter in the district can watch both candidates answer the same question, side by side, with no script. A farm bureau meeting is a room full of people who invited you.
And Bost said it to a radio audience that had just spent days asking him for exactly that.
Town halls: "people didn't try to interrupt"
Then Mackey asked about town halls. Bost said he switched to telephone town halls because in-person ones got too loud:
"Used to be town halls could be had and they were civil and people didn't try to interrupt, so the people that were not the person yelling, but the people that were actually interested in the issue could hear."
He said his phone calls reach "5 to 7,000 people at a pop." Mackey pointed out the obvious: on a phone call, the office can screen "who gets to ask questions and how angry at you they may or may not be." Bost said the screening "is very light." He blamed the problem on something that has "occurred around this nation … ever since the first Trump campaign."
His constituents have seen how those calls go. In February 2025, so many people who signed up for his telephone town hall never got a call that he had to apologize and reschedule. When the make-up call happened in March, more than 50 protesters showed up outside his Murphysboro office instead. "Normally he doesn't show up in person. He just talks on the phone, and the calls are monitored," one constituent told the Daily Egyptian.
He has never liked being yelled at
This isn't the first time Bost has complained about angry voters. In 2017, he described the angry town halls Republicans were facing this way: "You know the cleansing that the Orientals used to do where you'd put one person out in front and 900 people yell at them?" He later said he "used a poor choice of words."
When protesters did turn out, he claimed — on the evidence of their nicer-looking signs and unnamed "intelligence" — that "the protestors are paid".
The questions he'd face
There's plenty a debate could ask him. On the same show, Bost said diesel in his part of Illinois was about $6.30 a gallon.
A listener also asked why he voted four times — on March 5, April 16, May 14 and September 15, she said — against war powers measures on Iran. His answer: "If you want to have that debate, you have that debate during a time of peace. You do not have a debate like that at the time of war."
So: no debate on the war while there's a war, no debate with his opponent before the election, and no town hall where people can ask him in person.
Bost isn't alone. Fellow Republicans on this site have turned down debates this fall with the same excuse — they're too busy talking to voters. North Dakota's Julie Fedorchak won't debate and won't hold a town hall either.
The bottom line
Mike Bost has refused to debate Democrat Julie Fortier, saying a debate reaches only a "small audience," and he holds only telephone town halls because in-person ones stopped being "civil." When Illinois Public Media offered both candidates a live hour with callers, Fortier took it and Bost took 30 pre-recorded minutes — during which the two questions many listeners sent in were why he won't debate and why he won't meet them in person.
