Leonard Irving

{{Short description|American politician}}

{{For|the Indian-born English cricketer|Leonard Irvine}}

{{Infobox officeholder

| name = Leonard Irving

| image = Leonard Irving (Missouri Congressman).jpg

| alt =

| caption = Postcard photo from 1954 campaign for the US House

| state = Missouri

| district = 4th

| term_start = January 3, 1949

| term_end = January 3, 1953

| predecessor = C. Jasper Bell

| successor = Jeffrey Paul Hillelson

| birth_name = Theodore Leonard Irving

| birth_date = {{birth date|1898|3|24}}

| birth_place = St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1962|3|8|1898|3|24}}

| death_place = Washington, D.C., U.S.

| resting_place = Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.

| party = Democratic

}}

Theodore Leonard Irving (March 24, 1898 – March 8, 1962) was a U.S. Representative from Missouri.

Born in St. Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota, Irving moved with his parents to a farm in North Dakota, where he attended the public schools. He worked for a railroad as a boy and during the First World War; later, he left the railroad to become manager of a theater in Montana. Irving then moved to California and was manager of a hotel. He moved to Jackson County, Missouri, in 1934 and was employed as a construction worker and later became a representative of the American Federation of Labor.

Irving was elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses (January 3, 1949 – January 3, 1953). He was unsuccessful for reelection in 1952 and in a bid for the Democratic nomination in 1954. He once again became a labor organizer, and later was president of a labor union in Kansas City, Missouri.

He died on March 8, 1962, in Washington, D.C., while on a business trip, and was interred in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Kansas City.