Readers will recall the bitter primary battle between incumbent Fritz Kaegi, whom we endorsed for reelection, and his challenger, Lyons Township Assessor Patrick J. Hynes, 53. Hynes had worked for more than 20 years in the office of the Cook County assessor, including a period while Kaegi was his boss and also a long, less-than-auspicious stretch when Joe Berrios was in charge. Berrios, readers will recall, was notorious for accepting hefty campaign contributions from tax-appeal lawyers with business before his office. Berrios defended the practice.
You might wonder why anyone would want this job, given the Cook County system of continuous reassessment resulting in a lot of inevitable tension between commercial property owners (facing falling valuations of office buildings due to work from home and other factors) and homeowners (of late seeing stable or often rising property values) and the harsh reality that the assessor is merely dividing up a pie that, once baked, always has to come out the same so the taxing bodies get their dough.
We deemed the reform-minded Kaegi
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to be the smarter of the two primary choices and Hynes to be caustic and embittered in our meeting with the two. But voters were mad about property tax assessments and they ignored our advice.Now, the choice is between Hynes and 61-year-old libertarian Nico Tsatsoulis, who was rejected by voters in favor of Kaegi in 2022 and plans to explode the whole system. Tsatsoulis wants to cap property taxes at 1% of the market value of homes and limit reassessments to when a property is sold except for adjustments due to inflation. This would strike a blow, he has written, against a corrupt system. His foundational idea is that taxes should be limited to what homeowners can afford, not what revenue needs to be raised.
Tsatsoulis’ platform is designed to appeal to Cook County homeowners’ justified anger at the system, but chaos would ensue if he were elected in November. We’re forced to trust Hynes will give both sides a fair shake.
Patrick J. Hynes is endorsed.
Read all of the Tribune Editorial Board’s endorsements for the 2026 Illinois general election here.
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