About
Mike Bost (R-Ill.) has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2015, serving Illinois’ 12th Congressional District. He won reelection in 2022 with more than 75% of the vote and is a member of the far-right Republican Study Committee, among many other caucuses. He chairs the Veterans Affairs Committee and serves on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.
Prior to being elected to Congress, Bost served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1995–2015, becoming chair of the House Republican Caucus. A lifelong resident of Murphysboro, Illinois, he is a former Marine and a longtime firefighter who also worked for his family’s trucking company.
In 2014, reports surfaced that Bost had shot and killed his neighbor’s beagle after it bit his four-year-old daughter. He then went on to joke about the incident in interviews. Bost also drew criticism in 2017 for using a racially insensitive term for Asians when trying to explain why he had held so few town hall meetings as a congressman.
In voting against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in August 2021, Bost issued a statement saying: “Earlier this year, the Washington Democrats failed to get their federal election takeover signed into law, so they are trying once again… to nationalize our state and local elections and give unelected Washington bureaucrats power over state election laws.”
After the 2020 presidential election, Bost adhered to the GOP playbook by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the process. He objected to certifying the Electoral College win by President Biden and voted against both impeaching Trump for inciting the mob and establishing a special House committee to investigate the insurrection, among other measures.
January 6, 2021
- Just hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Bost joined 146 other congressional Republicans in refusing to certify Biden’s win of the presidential election.
- Although he condemned the violence during the attack on the Capitol, Bost refused to vote for Trump’s impeachment, stating, “I fear that efforts to impeach President Trump or force Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment will only make a bad situation worse.”
- Bost voted against establishing a House committee to investigate the attack, arguing that the committee was not being created in a “bipartisan manner” and the plan to create a committee “did not have language in there that said we cannot interfere with ongoing FBI and CIA investigations or some kind of other court case that’s pending out there.”
The Big Lie
- On Dec. 10, 2020, Bost signed an amicus brief in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in four swing states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
- In explaining that move and his Jan. 6, 2021 objection to certifying Electoral College votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona, Bost argued that “in both Pennsylvania and Arizona, election laws were changed by entities that were not their state legislators” and their votes failed to meet the “constitutional standard.”
Top contributors for the 2024 election cycle.
The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families.
| Organization Name | Total | PACs | Individuals |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Israel Public Affairs Cmte | $56,270.00 | $10,000.00 | $46,270.00 |
| Melaleuca Inc | $26,400.00 | $0.00 | $26,400.00 |
| Starkey Hearing Technologies | $24,800.00 | $5,000.00 | $19,800.00 |
| Poettker Construction | $23,100.00 | $0.00 | $23,100.00 |
| Nots Logistics | $19,700.00 | $0.00 | $19,700.00 |
| The Maschhoffs | $17,500.00 | $0.00 | $17,500.00 |
| Chisholm, Chisholm & Kilpatrick | $16,500.00 | $0.00 | $16,500.00 |
| FW Schmidt Realty Resources | $14,100.00 | $0.00 | $14,100.00 |
| Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting | $13,400.00 | $3,500.00 | $9,900.00 |
| Anesthesia Assoc of Southern Illinois | $13,200.00 | $0.00 | $13,200.00 |