Sure he’s bucking conventional wisdom. Sure he’s tilting at windmills in this age of media politics, when people supposedly vote image, not platforms — but, hey, that’s Tom. “In my 16 years of government service,” Tom Hynes stated in his campaign literature, “my approach to important issues has been to attack the issue, not my political opponent.” We have Hynes’s word that this campaign will be no different. “In the weeks to come I will discuss the issues and share ideas with you,” he promised in a commercial that aired a few weeks back. “But I will avoid the kind of divisive and negative campaigning that is demeaning to the office I seek. There is more at stake in this campaign than just winning.”
Tom Hynes is the Mr. Clean of Chicago politics, they say. Yet last month a page-one headline in the Sun-Times read, “Hynes Packs Payroll With Cronies.” A few days earlier, another page-one headline read, “Business Soars Since Law Firm Hired Hynes” — city business, that is. Over the years, as county assessor, he has been charged with providing big tax breaks to major landowners by grossly undervaluing the worth of major downtown properties. His campaign war chest is mostly money from downtown real estate interests.
The last time Chicago had a Hynes-like candidate for mayor was 1979, with Michael Bilandic: the loyal Machine soldier.
Generally Hynes supported a number of positive social welfare measures in Springfield, but his voting record shrivels when subjected to the higher ideals of reform. In its biennial ranking of Springfield legislators on key reform issues, the IVI-IPO ranked Hynes, in his last two years in office, 54th among 59 senators. To provide one example of his record, Hynes (siding with the regular Democratic contingency) voted against legislation prohibiting double-dipping, the Machine practice of serving as a state legislator while still holding a full-time, high-paying position in the city or county bureaucracy. His strong antiabortion voting record was typical of a Chicago regular Democrat.
A reporter who has known Hynes for years, a likely Hynes voter, is surprised by Hynes’s newfound imprudence. “What you’ve got to remember about Hynes is that he started in the ranks when Daley was still alive,” the reporter said. “He’s not used to acting without taking marching orders from the top . . . It’s no wonder he had so much trouble making up his mind about whether or not he’d run for mayor.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Hynes’s shot at the big time came in 1978, when he won the party’s endorsement for county assessor. Though generally a low-profile office in the greater scheme of things, historically county assessor has been a highly coveted spot. Ranked third, perhaps, in the Machine hierarchy, behind mayor and party chairman. The county assessor’s office is important, of course, because of its task of estimating, for tax purposes, the worth of about 1.4 million parcels of land. It’s a sensitive job as well: assessing property, particularly big downtown office buildings, is more arbitrary than one would think, and a favorable assessment can be worth millions of dollars in yearly tax savings for one of those buildings. But the assessor’s real power — his political strength — lies in his astounding ability to raise political funds. When Hynes ran for reelection in 1982, the Sun-Times reported late in the campaign that Hynes had raised just under $500,000, while his Republican opponent had raised $769. And it’s not likely that Hynes was collecting those funds for any last-minute media blitz.
No doubt Hynes has a better record than his predecessors of recent memory. That, however, is no great endorsement, considering his predecessors. There was the legendary P.J. (“Parky”) Cullerton, chosen by Daley to serve out the term of Frank Keenan, after Keenan’s conviction on income tax evasion in 1958. Mike Royko once wrote of Cullerton, “Parky had the qualities Daley was looking for: dollar signs for eyeballs, and a talent for never saying anything in public.”
