08/05/2025
Strive Strategies
Richard Irvin has a long history of running false, negative ads in the last two weeks of any election. This election cycle has been no different. Even as he is taking a pummeling in the community from his own finger-gate issues, he is attacking his opponents. You can see how Richard’s campaign took this photo from the filing of petitions to cap political campaign donations and turned it into a false, misleading advertisement.
Austin FitzCorbett - Candidate - West Aurora School District 129, AN IT PROFESSIONAL, DID SOME DIGGING AND THIS IS WHAT HE FOUND:
The ad about Lofchie disclaimed “Paid for by Wrong for Aurora” and the ad about Laesch disclaimed “Paid for by Aurorans for Safe Streets”. I found neither of those groups in the Illinois State Board of Elections’ online political committee database. They could be very new, thus not reported/online yet. The Wrong for Aurora website also has not a speck of ownership - no political committee disclaimers and no contact information.
We’ll have to wait to see if either of the disclaimed political committees show up in campaign disclosure records to learn exactly how Wrong for Aurora is being funded, but I’ve got some evidence to make an educated guess. When the publishers of the Wrong for Aurora website set up the website’s foundation in late January, they exposed details about their identity on an unlisted but publicly available page. Using those details, I determined that the website was published by the owner of Bit Riot Digital and twenty9north, two La Grange businesses that create websites and digital campaigns for political candidates. According to their websites, those two businesses regularly partner with Strive Strategies, an Oak Brook political consulting firm run by Mayor Richard Irvin’s former mayoral campaign chairman, Dennis Cook. Cook also chaired the Build R Futures PAC, which took $278,500 in contributions starting in 2019 and paid $101,755 to Bit Riot Digital, twenty9north, and Strive Strategies before closing in 2024 by making a final contribution of $38,746 to the Irvin campaign. Each of the three businesses have been used by candidates for multiple City of Aurora election cycles, including incumbent candidates Brandon Tolliver, Shweta Baid, Ron Woerman, and Richard Irvin.
