Tom Hayden Recovering From Heart Attack

Political activist and former state legislator Tom Hayden was reported “up and about” and in good spirits Friday despite suffering a heart attack Sunday while vacationing with his family in New Mexico.

Hayden, 61, the “Chicago Seven’ radical who stormed the 1968 Democratic National Convention to protest the Vietnam War and was later married to actress Jane Fonda, “is staying calm and cool, waiting to see what treatment he’ll be getting,” his personal aide, Sandy Brown, said Friday.

Brown said Hayden awoke in the middle of the night with chest pains and had difficultly breathing. After examination by doctors in the Santa Fe area, he was flown by private jet to Santa Monica on Thursday and driven to his home in Brentwood.

“He’s a pretty healthy guy,” Brown said. “But he’s concerned about where he goes from here and what needs to be done.”

In June, after four stormy decades on the public political stage, Hayden lost a Los Angeles City Council race to Jack Weiss, a former prosecutor who had never held public office.

In conceding defeat, Hayden expressed regret at not being able to play a crusader role on the council.

“It was my wish to be Upton Sinclair or Lincoln Steffens inside City Hall, challenging the shameful insider culture of power that has turned Los Angeles more into a city of scandals than a city of angels,” the 1960s co-founder of the Students for a Democratic Society said.

Hayden, who spent 18 years in Sacramento as a state senator and assemblyman, waged an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate before losing races for governor of California in 1994 and mayor of Los Angeles in 1997.

He was vacationing with his second wife, Barbara, and their son, Liam, when he fell ill in New Mexico.