Hoffman Estates incumbents block Collins' return

Hoffman Estates voters are not turning back the clock and returning former trustee Cary Collins to the village board five years after his resignation.

Instead, incumbent trustees Anna Newell, Gary Pilafas and Gary Stanton won additional four-year terms in the board in Tuesday's election.

With all 31 precincts reporting early Wednesday, Newell had 2,070 votes, Pilafas 1,916 votes, Stanton 1,782 votes and Collins 1,055 votes.

"We just opened the champagne," Pilafas said when the first decisive results rolled in.

He attributed the incumbents' success to a lot of door-to-door campaigning, during which they heard positive feedback about the current state of Hoffman Estates.

"These last weeks, people were telling us they'd already voted," Pilafas said. "A lot of people said they liked the direction of the village."

Regardless of the results, Collins pledged that Tuesday night was the official start of his campaign to unseat Hoffman Estates Mayor Bill McLeod in the 2017 election.

Collins denied that a victory Tuesday would have committed him to being at odds with McLeod on every issue for the next two years. Even as a more contrarian voice on the village board in the past, Collins said he and McLeod respect each other and would have agreed on a majority of the issues.

But Collins said he has a different vision for the mayor's office than McLeod.

"I think there's just a different way to do it," Collins said, adding that he expects to do more door-to-door campaigning before the next election.