* NBC 5…

Irvin has also run ads discussing his response to incidents of looting and rioting in Aurora in May 2020, but State Sen. Darren Bailey says that his opponent has misrepresented his actions during that unrest.

“When the riots broke out in Aurora, he told police to stand down,” Bailey said. “And nobody is talking about that.”

Officials enacted a curfew during that incident, which saw individuals engaging in violent clashes with police in the wake of the George Floyd shooting in Minnesota. […]

“He was a passionate supporter of Black Lives Matter,” Sullivan added. “When cop cars were being burnt, he said he was ‘conflicted’ on whether to take action.”

Irvin, who has said during the campaign that he does not support Black Lives Matter, defended his record on the FOID legislation.

“Those FOID card changes that Pritzker talked about were not enough to go beyond what we needed to fix,” he said. “It’s broken, and when I’m governor I’ll fix it.”

* OK, let’s take these one at a time, starting at the bottom of the story and working up. Here’s Irvin’s full quote on the problems with the FOID card system…

…And then myself, not just a year ago, my FOID card expiring during the pandemic and I wasn’t able to get a FOID card for a full year. Now there’s a Second Amendment here in this country that says that you know, all of our citizens, law abiding citizens, you know, have the ability to own to own firearms, and the FOID card system is broken and needs to be fixed to ensure that that Constitution that constitutional amendment is [garbled]

Not gonna speak to the constitutional issues, but the FOID backlog has been eliminated, according to Illinois State Police spokesperson Melaney Arnold…

Hi Rich,

Since the middle of January, ISP has met all statutory turnaround times for processing new FOID as well as FOID renewals.

FOID new - 30 calendar days
FOID renewal - 60 business days

Thanks
Melaney

Maybe the candidate should check things out before saying that the next time.

* Let’s move on to Sullivan’s accusation that Irvin said he was “conflicted” during the riots. The Sullivan campaign pointed me to a video excerpt from August of 2020. Click here to watch…

…around the ountry, destroy our downtown, you know, in a matter of minutes what it took us years to build. And as I sat there in the police situation room, which was our EOC Emergency Operation Center, and I saw the drones going overhead as you know, things on fire, police cars on fire, my downtown just on fire, people running around destroying things. You know, I was conflicted. In one sense, I’m the mayor and I’m saying ‘This can’t happen my city’ and I refuse to accept that this is happening. On the other hand, I recognize that unless there’s some type of disruption, you know, in what they want here in our country, things won’t change. Just to simply knock on somebody’s door and say, you know, ‘I want equity and fairness,’ you know, without disruption, without anything behind. It doesn’t work.

So, yeah, that’s accurate. And, frankly, I kinda like that Richard Irvin. Too bad he’s now running away from his past.

* Bailey’s claim that Mayor Irvin ordered the police to “stand down” comes from an interview that Jeanne Ives did of former Aurora Ald. Rick Lawrence…

I’ve seen his commercial. He talks a lot about what he did during the riot. Our police officers were told to stand down and not engage in the riot. And over 30 businesses were destroyed in Aurora. And so that’s the real record. It’s frustrating to watch you know a made-up character by a marketing department because that’s not the person that I know and it’s not the person I worked with.

I reached out to Lawrence via Twitter, Facebook and email. “How do you know this to be true?” I asked. “And when was this order allegedly given?” I have not yet heard back. I’ll let you know if I do hear something. Lawrence has tangled with Irvin in the recent past over Irvin’s alleged corruption. I don’t think his claim yet rises to the level of evidence in a gubernatorial campaign. But if there’s evidence or another witness, I’m all ears.

* Coverage roundup from yesterday’s Irvin press conference, which went a lot more smoothly than his previous one…

* Republican Irvin’s anti-crime plan rests on repealing law Democrats say he supported: Pritzker’s camp was referring to a letter Irvin sent to state Sen. Elgie Sims, one of the bill’s Democratic sponsors. The letter, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, commends Sims on his leadership on the bill’s passage and also lauds the measure’s goals. Irvin’s campaign told the Chicago Tribune in March that the letter wasn’t “laudatory,” and was simply Irvin “being polite to a state senator when asking for revisions to a law” that affected police in his city.

* Illinois governor candidate Richard Irvin promises to repeal criminal justice reforms: But while Irvin calls crime an epidemic, new statistics released by the Chicago Police Department show that shootings are down 15.6% from the start of this year through the end of May. Murders are down 7.7% compared to the same five months last year. Irvin also found himself on the defensive about his recent criticism of the FOID, or Firearm Owner’s Identification System, which he called “broken.” That despite praising Pritzker when he signed a bill in Aurora last August to expand background checks, a move in response to calls for gun reform after the mass shooting the Pratt manufacturing plant.

* Irvin promises to repeal criminal justice reforms, gubernatorial rival calls him a ‘fraud’: “I’m the mayor of a city — second-largest city in the state — who not long ago was one of the most violent cities in the state of Illinois, per capita with over 30 murders a year,” Irvin said. “Now make Aurora one of the safest large cities in America.” But Irvin’s rivals in the Republican primary said that claim is outdated, citing the most recent statistics about crime in Aurora. “Actually, criminal assault is up 129% in the city of Aurora. Aggravated assault up 44%. Violent crime up 38%. Those are the facts and he has to be held accountable for his record. Aurora is not even in the 100 safest communities in the state of Illinois. Mayor Richard Irvin is really a fraud,” said Jesse Sullivan (R), candidate for governor.