While many political races can be contentious, the two candidates running to be the mayor of Gurnee are both determined to not run a negative campaign against one another leading up to the April 1 election.
Gurnee Mayor Tom Hood is running for his second term in office against Village Trustee Quin O’Brien, who is in the middle of his second four-year term on the Village Board.
O’Brien said that he started having conversations with Gurnee residents about him potentially running for mayor two years ago, and in that time thought about what it would mean to run against Hood.
“It was not my trajectory, but life happens like that,” O’Brien said. “People think I could do a good job, and if I didn’t think that I could do a good job I wouldn’t be running. That’s not an aside to [Hood] at all. I don’t think he’s doing a bad job. I just think I could be doing a different job.”
O’Brien was first elected to the Village Board in 2019. He founded an internet-based real estate company in 2000, but said he is now “semi-retired.”
“I got into [the Village Board] just because I wanted to give back,” he said.
He added that a continued desire to give back, as well as requests from some residents led to his decision to run for mayor.
“[The candidacy] was a request,” O’Brien said. “I’ve had many people tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Quin, we think you’d be wonderful to lead Gurnee because of how active you are in the community and your creative thinking.’”
Some of the things that O’Brien said would set him apart from Hood are his “personality, style and out-of-the-box thinking.” If elected, he wants to focus on turning the portion of Gurnee east of U.S. Route 41 into “a destination” and a “revenue-producing area.” He also said that he would want the village to focus on replacing underground water pipes.
“We have to plan ahead for it right now,” he said. “We should be saving $4 million a year for that, and we’re saving about $2 million a year. We have a wonderful infrastructure plan for aboveground with the streets, but we need to start planning for underground.”
Hood said that he talked to O’Brien when he was still considering running for mayor, because he didn’t want “a contested election.”
“We’ve worked together over the last four years, and I’ve had a lot of contact with him,” Hood said. “We haven’t run a negative campaign. I don’t have negative things to say about him, and he doesn’t have negative things to say about me. That doesn’t mean that I think he’s qualified to do the job.”
O’Brien said that although he doesn’t have the previous experience of serving as Gurnee’s mayor, the village has a strong group of employees who have expertise and would advise him.
“I don’t pretend to say that I have all the answers, but I do know the people who have the answers,” he said.
Hood, an attorney at Hood Law, said that throughout his first term he feels that he’s established a direction for the village, but still has goals for Gurnee left to accomplish.
“There’s a vast difference between being a trustee and a mayor in terms of the responsibility, and the direction and leadership that you have,” he said. “In four years, I’ve had the ability to establish that, but there’s a lot of work yet to be done.”
Hood, who was previously a village trustee, was sworn in for his first term in 2021.
“It was a rough start,” Hood said about being elected during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that the village’s ability to rebound from the pandemic is one of the things that has made him the proudest throughout his term.
“I’m really proud of how the businesses have rebounded,” he said. “We’re stronger than we’ve ever been, even pre-pandemic. Our numbers are amazing.”
Hood said he’s also proud of how Gurnee’s residents have rebounded from the pandemic, partly thanks to local events.
“People wanted to stay home, and didn’t want to go out and see their neighbors and go places,” Hood said. “During these last four years, I’m really proud to have sponsored a block grant program.”
The village’s Neighbor Up Block Party Grant Program gives grants of up to $500 to neighborhoods to promote block parties, which Hood said helps to contribute to creating a community.
Hood said that if elected to a second term, he hopes to continue to focus on the village’s safety, including working on ending the ethylene oxide emissions emitted from Vantage Specialty Chemicals, a chemical company located in Gurnee.
“Not just police and fire, but also the environment,” he said. “We’ve worked well with Stop EtO, the main resident group that was going after seeing [ethylene oxide] being reduced, and that’s happened.”
