Editor’s Note: This is one in a series of stories looking at candidates for mayor of Aurora in the Feb. 25 primary election.
Judd Lofchie, an Aurora-based business lawyer and commercial real estate broker who currently sits on the East Aurora School District Board of Education, is running for mayor.
Early voting is currently available for the Feb. 25 primary election, which includes the Aurora mayoral primary. Also on the ballot for mayor of Aurora in the primary are incumbent Richard Irvin, Ald. John Laesch, Ald. Ted Mesiacos, Karina Garcia and Jazmine Garcia, who recently suspended her campaign.
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. In Lofchie’s interview, he said the city could be heading toward “financial ruin” because of what he said are its large amounts of debt, its unfunded pensions, its “massive projects” and the “massive subsidies” it gives to developers.
“I’m all for spending money. I’m a business guy,” Lofchie said. “But, we have to make sure it’s going to at least break even.”
Although he has spent the last roughly 30 years in Aurora, Lofchie was born in Chicago and grew up around Elmhurst and Oak Brook, he said. After graduating from York High School, Lofchie graduated from the University of Michigan, then went on to get his Juris Doctorate from Pepperdine University School of Law and an advanced law degree from American University.
Lofchie said that being a lawyer was something he always wanted to be in part because it seemed like something that could help people. His parents volunteered a lot when he was growing up, and they instilled in him an interest in helping others, he said.
That interest has extended beyond Lofchie’s work as a lawyer into what he called a “lifetime of community service.” That includes volunteering at homeless shelters and food banks, roughly 25 years in the Rotary Club and the founding of StreetWise, a newspaper turned magazine in Chicago designed to help homeless people. Lofchie still serves on the board of StreetWise.
According to StreetWise’s website, the organization “exists to elevate marginalized voices and provide opportunities for individuals to earn an income with dignity.” The idea, the website said, was to give homeless people a chance to “regain personal dignity and help themselves” by selling StreetWise to earn money rather than beg, but the organization also offers an employment preparation and placement program along with other supportive services.
Lofchie first got involved in politics around 20 years ago by working on campaigns, and then ran his own successful campaign to be 10th Ward alderman in Aurora in 2017, he said. There he served one term before unsuccessfully challenging Irvin in the 2021 mayoral race.
He ran for mayor in 2021 because he “just couldn’t take being an alderman” after clashing so much with Irvin, who he said is “not collaborative.”
As alderman, his biggest accomplishments were an ethics ordinance that outlines procedures for gifts, conflicts of interest and similar things as well as changing the way the city gave out financial incentives to developers, he said.
In 2023, Lofchie was elected to the East Aurora School Board, where he still serves. While on that board, his proudest accomplishments have been the approval of a new vocational center and the feedback he’s given the board and the administration based on conversations he’s had with teachers, he said.
In his professional life, Lofchie is a self-employed lawyer practicing real estate, estate planning and business law as well as being a real estate broker. Through that work, he has helped over 50 businesses open in Aurora, he said, and that has helped him to understand the process, which he said was “difficult, cumbersome” and “needs to be streamlined.”
For example, he said that it often takes more than six months to get a permit instead of the two to three months it should take. Also, it takes six or seven meetings to get developments approved, but in other cities it only takes three, he said.
Lofchie said that easing restrictions on both Aurora businesses and residents is a priority of his. He suggested the city could implement a streamlined permitting process similar to Chicago’s Express Permit Program and could cut down on the number of meetings needed to get a development approved.
Aurora also often gives fines that are “abusively excessive” to both businesses and residents who are trying their best to follow city codes, according to Lofchie. He said the city should instead work with those businesses and residents to get issues fixed.
However, Lofchie said his top priority is fiscal responsibility and managing the budget given the city’s financial state, which is why he is running for mayor.
He said the proposed 4,000-seat theater and 600-person event space known as the City of Lights Center, which city staff previously said would cost between $100 million and $120 million to build, is “the scariest because, without any sort of real plan that it’ll break even, it could drive us into bankruptcy.”
If elected, Lofchie said he would make sure that every major development project the city undertakes has “some sort of proof” like a study or business plan showing that it is at least going to break even. He would also look to “aggressively” bid out big professional service contracts, similar to what the East Aurora School Board has done to save money, he said.
Finally, Lofchie would also stop what he called the “massive subsidies” to developers, he said. Because he has been in the business for over 30 years, he knows more qualified developers who could be attracted to Aurora that don’t need city funds to do projects in the city, he said.
Another priority would be implementing a program called “Aurora Promise.” Lofchie said this program would give scholarships to qualifying Aurora high school students to attend college or a vocational program.
Although Irvin has previously criticized this idea for being similar to the “Aurora Promise” program recently passed by the City Council, which would give all Aurora public school kindergarteners a bank account with a starting balance of $50 to spend on education after high school, Lofchie said that program is “kind of a joke” compared to the one he is proposing, especially since the bank account does not generate interest.
What sets Lofchie apart from other candidates is his experience in management and in business, he said.
While as mayor he could bring in many more businesses than he already has, the city needs a master plan that is informed by community input to help decide where the city wants certain kinds of businesses, so then the city could work to attract them to those areas, according to Lofchie.
He also wants to help existing businesses, which he said the city could be doing better. He suggested support for minority-owned businesses and marketing help for all city businesses, helping to keep them around after grand-opening ribbon cuttings.
According to Lofchie’s campaign website, he has been endorsed by Naperville Township Trustee Loretta Burke, the Rev. Dan Haas and Dr. Robert Renteria, among others.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
