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player ready...Editor’s Note: This is one in a series of stories looking at candidates for mayor of Aurora in the Feb. 25 primary election.
Richard Irvin, who has been the mayor of Aurora since 2017 and is the city’s first African American mayor, is once again running for four more years in office.
Early voting is currently available for the Feb. 25 primary election, which includes the Aurora mayoral primary. Also running for mayor of Aurora in the primary are Ald. John Laesch, Ald. Ted Mesiacos, Karina Garcia, Jazmine Garcia and Judd Lofchie.
Aurora residents will each get to vote for one mayoral candidate, and the two candidates with the highest number of votes in the Feb. 25 primary will move on to the April 1 general election.
Each of the mayoral candidates agreed to an interview with The Beacon-News. During Irvin’s interview, he said that he has accomplished a lot in his time as mayor — including, he said, more economic development than 60 or 70 years of past mayors put together — but that he doesn’t say that to be arrogant.
“I love Aurora. This is my hometown, my city. My mom lives here, my family lives here,” Irvin said. “All I want to do is make a difference and take Aurora to the next level.”
Irvin was born to a teenage single mother and grew up primarily in low-income apartments, where he saw gangs and violence he initially got involved with but eventually stopped because it “held no value.”
From there, Irvin moved first to sports and then to a part-time job, he said. After barely graduating high school, Irvin decided he wanted to go to college, and he joined the Army for the financial support through the GI Bill.
Irvin was deployed during the first Gulf War, and he said that experience changed his life. The Army gave him a sense of honor, service and discipline, but also seeing the destruction and despair during his deployment made him want to go into public service to fix things that he thought were broken, Irvin said.
When he came back to the U.S., Irvin went to college, first getting an associate’s degree — making him the first person in his family to graduate from both high school and college — before going back to get his bachelor’s degree while working, he said. After getting his bachelor’s degree, Irvin attended the Northern Illinois University School of Law and graduated with a Juris Doctorate.
He then worked as a prosecutor at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, then at the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office before becoming the first community-based prosecutor, working in Aurora to partner with local, state and federal law agencies during one of the most dangerous times in the city’s history, he said.
Irvin then opened his own law firm and decided he wanted to start running for office. He first ran for mayor of Aurora against Tom Weisner in 2005 but lost, but in 2007 he was elected as an alderman at-large.
Irvin ran again for mayor in 2009 but lost again to Weisner, so he turned his sights to becoming a judge instead, Irvin said. But a group of local pastors convinced him to try for mayor one more time, and he won in 2017, ending his 10-year term as alderman at-large, he said.
Since becoming mayor, Irvin’s accomplishments can be summarized with the acronym SEE, he told The Beacon-News in his interview. That acronym stands for Safety, Education and Economy.
As for safety, the city has become one of the safest in the U.S. by focusing on and expanding the Aurora Police Department, according to Irvin.
But he said those police officers are not just “paramilitary officers in their black and white waiting for something to happen,” they instead are focused on community-oriented policing that gets officers out in their community and proactive.
As for education, while the city does not have direct control over its school districts, Irvin helped to bring them together along with local colleges and universities to form the Aurora Education Commission, he said. While Irvin said that he cannot take all the credit for the successes these districts have had, including a significantly higher graduation rate at East Aurora High School, bringing people together through the commission did help bring change, he said.
As for the economy, he said the city has done more economic development since he has been mayor “than all the mayors put together over the last 60 to 70 years,” as shown by the number of buildings that have sat empty and fell to ruin in that amount of time that are now redeveloped, he said. Those redevelopment projects include the Copley Hospital site, the Terminal Building and the Hobbs Building, Irvin said.
Plus, he said the city has seen other development, including lots of residential all over the city.
Irvin said he has also worked to make the city more transparent through boards and commissions that get people directly involved in city workings and through publicizing city information through the online streaming of city meetings and through open data websites, like the kind recently launched by the police department.
Irvin’s future plans also continue along his three pillars of Safety, Education and Economy, with some of those plans already going on and others set to launch this year, he said. While his opponents may say they have better ideas, Irvin said those are untested or are copies of his plans with slight changes, while he said he has the experience.
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Irvin’s opponents often accuse him of giving city contracts only to those who are his friends or who donate to his campaign, but he said that is not true.
Instead, Irvin said he has had to befriend developers to make them feel comfortable investing in the city, or he has gone to people he already knew to convince them to invest in the city when he couldn’t find anyone else. If others want to bring tens of millions of dollars of development to Aurora, “trust me when I say we’re going to be open minds and open hands and open hearts,” he said.
As for developers who have invested in the city also donating to his campaign, Irvin said they are doing that because they want the city to “continue to move forward,” so they want a mayor they know will help them to get “a return on their investment.” The state also has strict campaign financing laws already, and he follows those laws in reporting his donations, which he wouldn’t do if he was actually doing something wrong, he said.
Plus, Irvin said he does not vote on contracts, so all of the aldermen who vote on the contracts and move them forward through their committees, along with city staff, would also have to be in on any “pay-to-play” scheme.
Irvin has been endorsed by the Aurora Sergeant’s Association, the Aurora Firefighters Local 99, the Association of Professional Police Officers and the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, according to campaign press releases.