The House's last scheduled voting day before the election is October 1. After that, members go home, keep drawing their salary, and campaign.

On Sunday, September 6, 2026, the Springfield News-Leader ran a letter from Missi Hesketh, the Democratic candidate in Missouri's 7th Congressional District, making Eric Burlison an offer for those weeks. She wrote that she would make herself available "any Sunday-Thursday evening in October to have an organized and civil public forum" alongside him.

She also made a claim about why she had to say it in a newspaper instead of by phone:

"Congressman Eric Burlison and his staff dodge every single person who calls or emails his office or campaign attempting to set up a public forum."

That is her characterization, and she is running against him. But it is not a hard claim to check, because Burlison has been unusually open about how he feels on this subject.

He said it out loud

In March 2025, Burlison told St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum that "the town halls create a dynamic where only political nutjobs show up."

He said it after his fellow Missouri Republican Mark Alford was confronted by angry constituents at a town hall in late February 2025 over federal layoffs, tariffs and the war in Ukraine. Burlison allowed that some people had legitimate concerns, but said an in-person town hall creates "a dynamic that you're inviting all of the most extreme people to come to," the Springfield Daily Citizen reported.

Around the same time, Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who chairs the House Republicans' campaign committee, was telling members to hold their town halls virtually instead of in person.

Burlison already did. He still does — his office reported holding one in January 2026.

What happened when constituents asked in person

On Thursday, March 13, 2025, constituents of the 7th District gathered outside Burlison's Springfield office on East Ridgeview Street to protest his refusal to hold town halls. One of them, John Jennings, said he would collect questions from the crowd and hand-deliver them to the office in the hope that Burlison would respond.

Burlison's spokesperson told KY3 that in-person town halls "have become a target for organized opposition groups."

That is the whole argument, stated plainly: the people who want to ask him questions in a room are the wrong kind of people.

The difference between a phone call and a room

A telephone town hall is not a town hall with worse audio. It is a different event with different rules.

The office decides who gets on the line and which questions get read. Nobody in the audience can see how many people are waiting, or hear a question that the screener skipped, or follow up when the answer misses. There is no video, no local reporter in the back of the room, and no way for a constituent to know whether the person next to them was asking the same thing.

That is why a public forum in October is a real request and a tele-town hall is not an answer to it.

What he would have to answer for

Burlison represents southwest Missouri. A public forum in October would fall inside the final five weeks before an election in which his constituents get to weigh in on what he has done with the seat.

There is material. In March 2024 he was one of nine members of the House who would not vote to condemn Russia for kidnapping Ukrainian children; the resolution passed 390 to 9. He wrote to the Joplin City Council backing a data center that hundreds of his own constituents had turned out to oppose, and in July 2026 told a Jasper County candidate forum that "what the business is doing doesn't matter." Hesketh's letter also points at Missouri Republicans' support for Amendments 4 and 5, the ballot measures that would have made it harder for citizens to use the initiative petition process and swapped the state income tax for higher sales taxes. Missouri voters buried both on August 4, 2026, by 80 and 83 percent.

Those are the sort of questions a room asks and a screener does not have to pass along.

What the record shows

Eric Burlison has said publicly that in-person town halls attract "only political nutjobs," his office has said they are "a target for organized opposition groups," and he holds his town halls by telephone instead. Constituents protested outside his Springfield office over it in March 2025 and got that answer. On September 6, 2026, his opponent offered to appear with him on any weeknight in October, when the House is out of session after its first day and he will be home in the district anyway.

Source

"Will Eric Burlison campaign in public?", a letter from Missi Hesketh in the Springfield News-Leader, September 6, 2026.