Unofficial results from Tuesday night show incumbent Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin and Ald. John Laesch leading to advance through the primary election to be on the April 1 ballot as mayoral candidates.
The nonpartisan Tuesday primary asked voters to vote for one of the six candidates — Laesch, Irvin, Ald. Ted Mesiacos, Karina Garcia, Judd Lofchie and Jazmine Garcia, who recently suspended her campaign and endorsed Laesch — with the top two advancing to the consolidated election on April 1.
Polls were open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. in DuPage, Kane, Kendall and Will counties.
Results from those counties posted online Tuesday night, which are still unofficial until they are certified, showed that Irvin led with 4,060 votes and that Laesch was in second with 3,386 votes. Trailing the top two were Mesiacos with 1,206 votes, Lofchie with 1,020 votes, Karina Garcia with 378 votes and Jazmine Garcia with 60 votes, according to the unofficial numbers.
Unofficial results from all voting precincts were in from DuPage, Kane and Will counties, but Kendall County was still reporting 26 of 28 precincts counted as of 10 p.m. on Tuesday.
Irvin has been the mayor of Aurora since 2017 and before that was an alderman at-large for 10 years in the city. In 2022, he unsuccessfully ran for governor of Illinois, losing in the Republican primary.
In an interview with The Beacon-News, Irvin said he has focused on three things during his time as mayor: safety, education and the economy. If elected to a third term, he would continue to focus on those things, he said.
Irvin did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday night.
Laesch has been an Aurora alderman at-large since 2023 and previously served on the East Aurora School Board. He unsuccessfully ran against Irvin for mayor in 2021.
Laesch, in an interview with The Beacon-News, said if elected he would work to bring living-wage jobs to the city, foster a “green collar economy” and put in place ethics reform around campaign financing.
On election night after unofficial results showed he was one of the top two candidates, Laesch thanked Aurora voters for “expressing their confidence with their vote.”
He also said he was impressed with his campaign, which ran “pretty much on unpaid staff,” and attributed its success in the primary in part to a message of wanting a government and economy that “works for everyone” but also to its effective strategy and the hard work of “a lot of people who are very committed and care about our city and want to see it move in a different direction.”
Earlier in the day, officials from local counties told The Beacon-News that turnout had been low up to that point, but there were still several hours to go.
Unofficial results from Thursday night showed that, of the 52,668 Kane County residents eligible to vote in the mayoral race primary, 6,145 – or around 12% – voted in Tuesday’s election.
However, Kane County Clerk John Cunningham said at around 4 p.m. on Tuesday that there were still over 1,500 ballots that were mailed out to voters but had not yet been returned. With so many potential votes through mail-in ballots yet to be returned, results could still change “quite a bit” because of how close consolidated elections often are, Cunningham said.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
