Editor’s Note: This is one in a series of stories looking at candidates for mayor of Aurora in the Feb. 25 primary election.
Karina Garcia, the current president and CEO of the Aurora Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 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, Judd Lofchie, Ald. Ted Mesiacos 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. During Karina Garcia’s interview, she said that she was running to show the community that it can have representation in local government and that people don’t have to be under leadership that is not focusing on their needs.
Karina Garcia said she is different from other candidates because of her connection to the city’s grassroots, which she said helps her better understand the community and come up with solutions.
Garcia was originally born in Mexico City but immigrated to the area when she was 9 years old with her sister and parents. Primarily she grew up in West Chicago, where she also graduated high school, which she said was nice because a majority of people were Hispanic, so it was easy to find Mexican food and people who were bilingual.
Immediately after high school, Garcia started attending the College of DuPage studying business, but she had to drop out to support herself and her children, she said. From there she worked a variety of jobs, eventually settling on Aurora’s East Side in 2000, where she said she found a very different lifestyle than the one she had in West Chicago because of the shootings and gangs.
“To me, it was like, you only see that in movies,” Garcia said. “But it was real life at that point.”
The job she said that gave her the most experience was working for Dan Wolf Automotive Group, where she eventually found herself representing the company and networking with the various chambers of commerce in the area, she said.
That’s how Garcia said she was first introduced to the Aurora Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which she “fell in love with.” Her father had previously opened his own business, and she “felt like my dad needed a lot of help,” so she was excited to see a group helping people like her father in their own language, she said.
Garcia was looking for a career change to spend more time with her children around the same time that the executive director position for the chamber came open, she said, so she took the job even though it was a big pay cut.
In 2016, Garcia left the chamber to open up her own business that helped people with their immigration paperwork, she said. Then, in 2017, she went to work for the city in the Community Services Department until 2021, she said.
After leaving the city, Garcia went back to work for the Aurora Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, this time as its president and CEO, a position she still serves in. There, she helps guide the chamber’s efforts to provide services to local businesses, host workshops, connect businesses to resources and help them get licenses or permits, among other things, she said.
The Aurora Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce did not merge with the other local chambers of commerce and other economic development-focused organizations into the recently-launched Aurora Regional Economic Alliance, in part because the Hispanic Chamber does not duplicate any services that were offered by the other organizations, according to Garcia.
Plus, Garcia said the merger looked to her like the city just wanted more control over these organizations, and since the Hispanic Chamber often has to help businesses deal with the city, joining in the merger would have taken “the voice away from the local businesses, and we wouldn’t have been able to support them or stand up for them.”
Her run for mayor this year is the first time Garcia has stepped into politics herself, but she said other candidates have often come to her when they campaign because of her connection to Aurora’s grassroots. While other candidates in this race bring experience in politics, she brings relationships with local businesses and residents, she said.
And, it’s not just Hispanic businesses that she represents, according to Garcia. She said that she sits on a number of different local boards, and as mayor she would work with those organizations to find solutions for Aurora residents.
It’s long-term solutions that Garcia most wants to bring to the city, she said. While the city currently knows the community’s needs and points them out, she said, there aren’t any plans to address them long-term, especially for low-income families.
Small businesses’ needs must also be met with long-term solutions, but many businesses instead feel like they are being targeted by the city, according to Garcia. As an example, she pointed to the food truck ordinance, which she said she advocated against.
She suggested that aldermen should each study their own ward to find out what problems exist. The city focuses too much on “how great everything is going” and should instead be bringing up issues to fix them, she said.
The second thing Garcia said she would want to do as mayor is to continue to work on filling empty buildings around the city, and not just in downtown.
Also, Garcia would work to make it affordable for Aurora residents to stay here, especially seniors, by working on taxes and affordable housing, she said.
Previously, Garcia and several other mayoral candidates had legal challenges to their spots on the ballot. While others were never taken off the ballot, Garcia was taken off at first through a decision by the Aurora Electoral Board, but that decision was later overturned by a Kane County Circuit Court judge and she was placed back on the ballot, according to past reporting.
An appeal to that Kane County judge’s decision was made, but Garcia told The Beacon-News during her recent interview that the Second District Appellate Court had sided with her and kept her on the ballot. The whole process was unfair, she said, because the mistake she made that caused the legal challenge was so minor.
She believes that the legal challenge was actually a plan to force her to spend down campaign funds and keep her distracted, since it was hard for her to ask people to vote for her if she didn’t even know if those votes would count, she said.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com