Mayor Irvin: Enthusiasm and Experience Count

March 31, 2021
Dear editor;

The race among three candidates for Aurora mayor will boil down to our choice between incumbent mayor Richard Irvin and former East Aurora school board member, John Laesch.

The third candidate, Judd Lofchie, is a nice person, but has gathered neither the grassroots nor financial resources and support to establish enough momentum to win a campaign the size of Aurora mayor.

So, our family will be voting for Richard Irvin because he has demonstrated enthusiasm, energetic love for and identification with our city, bi-partisan loyalty to our country, and the ability to grow through difficult experiences on the job, including “holding the fort together” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Naturally, none of us agree all the time and sometimes all of us make unintentional mistakes, but enthusiasm, experience, and familiarity that we get with the first-term incumbent outweigh merely “promises made” by a mostly untried challenger.

But, what we have seen of challenger John Laesch’s actual performance on the East Aurora school board, as opposed to seemingly reasonable promises he’s now making as a mayoral candidate, scare me as a lifelong resident of Aurora.

• Mr. Laesch disrespectfully refused to stand for the pledge of allegiance in front of children at the beginning of school board meetings and did not attend student graduations.

• He was a “no show” and skipped attendance at 34 working committee meetings (44% of his total obligations).

• Incredibly, he publicly berated a senior high school student who was being recognized for earning an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis saying to him, in effect, “… you’re going to fight white man’s wars”(!)

• Laesch touts his lone school board support for boys being allowed in girls’ lockerrooms/bathrooms … simply too extreme for our hometown.

Those who ask you to vote for them campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. If I have learned anything in serving hundreds of thousands of people for the past thirty years, it’s the truth of Abe Lincoln’s caution to us, “Most men/women can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

Please don’t entrust authority in our lives to John Laesch. Like all of us, Richard is not perfect, but he loves our city and its heritage, and he shows up for work with consistent enthusiasm.

Chris Lauzen, former State Senator and County Board chairman