Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin’s tough-on-crime Republican campaign for governor ignores his years as criminal defense attorney.
SPRINGFIELD — As a Republican candidate for governor, Richard Irvin has promoted himself as a no-nonsense, law-and-order candidate who as a onetime prosecutor put “gangsters, drug dealers and wife beaters” in jail.
The crime issue has been pushed by billionaire businessman Ken Griffin, whose long-anticipated support of Irvin was formally announced last week and whose money is seen as critical to the GOP candidate’s success. Griffin, who has promised to go “all-in” to defeat Pritzker, made an initial contribution of $20 million to Irvin’s campaign.
“It’s not all that unusual in American politics for candidates to dramatically expand one piece of their record and diminish another, even though the part that’s being diminished might be a much more consequential and longer stretch of their career,” he said. During the 2020 civil unrest following the death of George Floyd, Irvin staunchly endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement, which has become synonymous with a push to fully or partially reallocate police resources to communities in economic peril — sometimes referred to as “defunding” the police.
Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin during a remembrance ceremony at the Aurora Historical Society for the five people who died in the Henry Pratt Company shooting three years ago, Feb. 15, 2022. [Most read] As Ayo Dosunmu takes part in the NBA’s Rising Stars event, the Chicago Bulls rookie continues his upward trajectory — while taking everything in stride: ‘He’s not necessarily intimidated by the moment’Irvin’s client pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated kidnapping about 4 ½ months later, in early 2008, and was sentenced to 22 years in prison, the records show.
Irvin was Aurora’s mayor in 2019 when Martin opened fire at the Henry Pratt Co. plant in Aurora, killing five people and wounding six others, five of them police officers, before being shot and killed by police.