Marathon man: Arlington Heights mayor on Bears, politics and more as he prepares to leave office

Tom Hayes starts most days before dawn, out for a run in the Northgate subdivision where he lives on the north side of Arlington Heights.

It’s his daily exercise routine, yes, but also a time of reflection for the 68-year-old mayor, lawyer, West Point graduate and Army veteran.

“I just use that time to think about things. I’ve thought about village issues. I’ve laid out speeches in my mind while I’ve been running, how I’m going to approach different issues or different events or engagements or appearances,” Hayes said.

Being a marathon runner — 13 in Boston and 25 in Chicago — is an adept metaphor for Hayes, whose career in elected public service began as a village trustee in 1991, continued as mayor in 2013, and reaches the finish line Monday night when he swears in Mayor-Elect Jim Tinaglia.

Hayes’ 34 years on the village board makes him the longest-serving elected official in the village’s history.

It’s a tenure marked by growth of the village’s downtown, navigating the pandemic and laying the groundwork for what could become a Chicago Bears stadium in town.

Hayes reflected on that and more during an interview in his village hall office with the Daily Herald.

Bears

When the still-operating Arlington Park racetrack went up for sale in 2021, Hayes recalled his conversations with the late, longtime Village Attorney Jack Siegel, who was there in 1975 when George Halas first came to Arlington Heights with plans to move the Bears to town.

“He still had paperwork in his closet at home about his dealings with the Bears back in 1975,” Hayes said of Siegel. “He said that came very, very close.”

That’s what Hayes was thinking about when he directed his staff to draft a letter to the Bears’ front office in the spring of 2021, saying he’d be happy to explore the possibility of a move to Arlington Park again.

Soon, Hayes had a phone call with team Chairman George McCaskey and then-President/CEO Ted Phillips.

The team bid on the property that summer, inked a purchase and sale agreement with Churchill Downs that fall, and closed on the deal in February 2023.

Hayes said he didn’t anticipate the property tax battle between the Bears and three area school districts that ensued. But it was the memorandum of understanding brokered by village officials and approved last December that led the Bears to resume planning studies for a potential Arlington Park redevelopment. Current team President/CEO Kevin Warren confirmed last month the site is back in the mix for a possible new stadium.

“We knew it would be a complex situation. You know, bringing an NFL team to your town, a town of 77,000 people, it’s not unprecedented, but it’s very different,” Hayes said. “It’ll be good in the long run, because they fully exhausted, I think, the possibility of staying downtown. And we’re still waiting on them to totally refocus to Arlington Heights, but I think it was a necessary part of the process.”

In the months since the memorandum was signed, Hayes and top village staffers have had regular meetings at village hall and Halas Hall with McCaskey, Warren and Karen Murphy, the team’s executive vice president of stadium development and chief operating officer.

McCaskey stopped by Hayes’ farewell reception April 21.

The mayor says he never thought Bears brass were negotiating in bad faith when they started listening to offers from other suburbs, or when they shifted focus to a domed lakefront stadium a year ago.

“I respect what the Bears have done. I respect what Kevin Warren was brought in to do. And I understood from day one he was trying to get the best deal for the team that he works for,” Hayes said. “I never, at one point, felt that they were playing us off against the city of Chicago or Northwest Indiana, or Aurora or Waukegan or whoever.”

When he announced his decision not to seek another four-year term last June, he predicted the Bears would make a decision whether or not to build a stadium in town before the end of his term. He now says he hopes the Bears recommit to Arlington Heights “in the very near future.”

Regimented

Hayes and his family moved from Chicago to the corner of Sigwalt Street and Highland Avenue in Arlington Heights in the 1960s. He attended kindergarten a couple blocks away, then moved to Mount Prospect and attended Prospect High School, where he met his wife, Sue.

A 1978 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Hayes was on active duty for five years, including time spent in a tank battalion in West Germany. He returned stateside and spent 17 years in the reserves, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

He’s been doing toxic tort litigation defense almost as long as he’s been an elected official, but says he’s not ready to retire from his day job at Chicago law firm McKenna Storer.

He often attended ribbon cuttings and events with an earbud in one ear, listening to a deposition or phone conference — a regimented schedule he attributes to his military background.

Politics and religion

During farewell remarks at the last village board meeting, Hayes said he’s tried to resist the trend of politics “creeping” into the village boardroom in recent years, since most suburban municipal elected positions are by their nature nonpartisan and candidates don’t run with a party affiliation.

At the same time, he doesn’t shy away from his personal background and how he got into local politics: Former Wheeling Township Trustee and Republican Committeewoman Ruth O’Connell encouraged him to run for village trustee in 1991.

Hayes, then a Sunday school teacher at The Orchard church, fit the bill of “good conservative Christians” O’Connell was looking for, he said.

At one point as a trustee, he contemplated a run for higher office — even beyond village president — but soon rejected that.

“After finding more about how partisan government operates from my work here in a nonpartisan environment, I really decided that this was a better fit for me in terms of my interests and desires and the way I like to operate and govern,” Hayes said. “I’m less confrontational, I think, than other people, and I like to collaborate and compromise. And it’s very difficult, especially in a state like Illinois, to get anything done.”

Despite sometimes disparate views of village board members — his own included — Hayes says he’s worked to achieve consensus and find middle ground.

During the height of COVID-19, some residents called for stricter enforcement of mask requirements at businesses or for police to break up youth basketball games at parks.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, the village board implemented diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at village hall.

“You try to create an environment where everybody’s happy. Everybody’s got to give a little bit. And that’s what we did and why we were so successful in getting through the pandemic and through those other issues, as well,” Hayes said.

He remains hard line on at least one issue. Hayes was the lone board member in 2020 to vote against overturning an earlier village ban on recreational marijuana sales.

“Sometimes I have to take a stand. And it’s not my religious belief. It’s my personal belief that it would have been bad for our image,” Hayes said of Arlington Heights, which he characterized as a “conservative, family-oriented community.”

Accomplishments and regrets

Hayes counts the village’s reputation as a good place to live, work and raise a family and for “good, honest local government” among his accomplishments, with a nod to downtown development.

When he first was elected to the board, the big issue at the time was how large and dense the area should become. There were only two high-rises at the time, and debates about building more — at heights above 10 stories — were furious.

But Hayes believes he and board members in the 1990s executed the downtown vision of their predecessors.

Hayes said he won’t be showing up to board meetings, but plans to stay informed about what’s going on around town. If there’s a Bears stadium groundbreaking down the road, he would like to be there.

“I’m going to have to see what God has in store. He’s got a plan for me for the next chapter,” Hayes said. “I don’t know what that is yet in terms of my retirement. I’m sure He’s going to put me to good use.”