Fritz Kaegi conceded defeat in his bid for a third term as Cook County assessor to rival Pat Hynes in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Kaegi, a self-described reformer who largely self-funded his campaign, trailed 47.5% to Hynes’ 52.5% with 88% of the estimated votes counted, a rare upset of a countywide incumbent.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, meanwhile, declared victory against challenger Brendan Reilly in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, with the downtown alderman conceding defeat roughly 90 minutes after polls closed.
With 90% of estimated votes counted, Preckwinkle led the downtown alderman 68.6% to 31.4%, according to unofficial results.
In deep blue Cook County, the winners of both races are also poised to win in November.
At his party in suburban Hodgkins, Hynes said he would stick to a simple promise: “We will make property taxes more accurate, more equitable and more transparent.”
The office “plays a critical role in people’s lives,” determining whether people can stay in their homes and whether businesses can stay open, Hynes said. “For too long, too many people across Cook County have felt the system was confusing, unfair and unjust.”
Conceding in Rogers Park, Kaegi said it was “the honor of my life to be part of this fight, to do what I could for the best people in the best city, in the best county in the world and I want to thank all of you for your support and for putting your trust in me.”
Backed by independent studies finding commercial properties were systematically underassessed, Kaegi won his first primary in 2018 on promises to level the playing field between commercial property owners and homeowners. The office is responsible for setting values of the county’s 1.8 million properties, a key calculation in determining what owners owe in property taxes.
In an emailed campaign statement, Kaegi’s team said he “fought to ensure mansions, luxury homes, and big commercial properties were assessed at what they’re actually worth,” cleaned up “pay-to-play corruption” and expanded property tax relief programs and the number of homeowners receiving their owed exemptions.
In the statement, Kaegi said he hoped Hynes “protects the reforms we’ve put in place,” including the retention of the office’s data scientists and making its valuation models public online.
“We made assessments fairer and saved working-class homeowners $2 billion compared to what they would have paid under the old system,” Kaegi’s statement said, “we made this office operate on fairness, not favoritism.”
In the back of a crowded sports bar, Hynes reaffirmed his commitment to “clean up the data,” though he didn’t address whether he planned to preserve any of his opponent’s reforms.
“We’re going to produce an assessment that taxpayers can have confidence in,” he said. “I’m very proud of the race that we ran.”
Hynes acknowledged the challenges of going up against a two-term incumbent, taking a jab at Kaegi for pouring millions into his own campaign.
“Trying to unseat an incumbent who has an endless supply of cash, that could just sit down at the kitchen table and write themselves a check, is an enormous undertaking,” Hynes said.
Hynes questioned Kaegi’s competence throughout the campaign, asserting that old and erroneous data had led to unpredictable assessments, skyrocketing bills for homeowners and uncertainty for potential investors.
A former field inspector in the office, Hynes racked up key endorsements from the Cook County Democratic Party over the summer, followed by trade unions eager for construction projects and powerful business interests, including property tax attorneys and appraisers and the Building Owners and Managers Association.
In an emailed statement, BOMA Executive Director Farzin Parang said Tuesday’s results were “a major win for property taxpayers across Cook County. Voters have made it clear they want real reform to the property tax system, not political platitudes. Our county needs stability, accuracy, and predictability in assessments, and we are optimistic that Pat Hynes will work to create assessments that taxpayers can trust.”
Hynes also comes from a family familiar with rough-and-tumble county politics. His uncle, Thomas C. Hynes, was county assessor from 1979 until 1997, also serving as president of the Illinois Senate and committeeman of the vote-rich 19th Ward. His cousins Dan Hynes and Matt Hynes held top posts in Gov. JB Pritzker’s and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administrations.
Kaegi held onto several previous progressive supporters, including Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, half of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, the union that represents workers in the office.
Kaegi campaigned in 2018 on transparency and reform, pledging to end the “reverse Robin Hood” assessment system that led to the undervaluation of big-business buildings and the overvaluation of homes under his predecessor, Joe Berrios. He swore off hiring family in the office and accepting donations from property-tax-appeal interests to demonstrate his credentials as an independent reformer. He handily won a second term in 2022.
He’s been able to keep his ethics pledge, in part, by seeding his own campaign funds. A former mutual fund portfolio manager and analyst, Kaegi has given his campaign $7.6 million since 2018, $2 million since January alone.
Kaegi’s campaign claimed that nearly half of the more than $2 million Hynes raised came from property tax attorneys, appraisers or other real estate interests. Hynes said his acceptance of donations from property tax attorneys does not mean the office will return to the Berrios era. Kaegi’s critique is hypocritical, Hynes said, since he, too, accepted developer dollars.
Hynes hoped to use countywide frustration over property taxes to his advantage. He called Kaegi’s assessments — especially on the city’s South and West sides — flawed, and argued volatile valuations were scaring away outside investment in the city.
As township assessor in Lyons, he tracked and highlighted new or renovated homes Kaegi failed to catch and update on the tax rolls. On the campaign trail, he said those failures were a sign Kaegi’s office needed to get back to basics.
The Tribune and the Illinois Answers Project detailed some of those problems in 2024, finding the assessor’s office had missed at least $444 million of assessed property value by misclassifying and undervaluing properties, primarily due to its failure to account for new construction and significant property improvements. Kaegi noted that his office had since caught and updated the vast majority of those properties and had hired several field inspectors to catch more.
Preckwinkle defeats Reilly
Approaching the podium at her election night party at Little Black Pearl on her political home turf in Hyde Park, supporters sang “Happy Birthday” to a smiling Preckwinkle.
She turned 79 on Tuesday. With no Republican candidate currently on the ballot, she is likely to make history in November by winning a record-breaking fifth term leading the Cook County Board.
“I love this job and tonight I’m deeply grateful for the chance to keep doing it,” she said, surrounded by elected officials who endorsed her.
“Sixteen years ago, the Cook County I stepped into was very different from the one we see today,” she said. “Back then, the county faced real financial instability. Public trust was low, and most people didn’t think much about county government or expect very much from it. The challenges were real, but so was the opportunity,” she said, touting the county’s financial turnaround and its investments in public health.
“We reshaped county government into something more engaged, more proactive and more willing to act as a partner, advocate and ally for our residents.”
Preckwinkle saw the highest percentage of votes in the 5th Ward, which is home to the University of Chicago and covers parts of the Hyde Park, South Shore and Woodlawn neighborhoods. A whopping 85% of voters in that ward cast their ballots for the incumbent board president, according to unofficial results, while her margin of victory exceeded 60% in several surrounding South and Far South Side wards, most notably the 4th Ward, where she previously served as alderman for 19 years.
Reilly, meanwhile, outperformed his opponent in just four wards spread throughout the city: the 2nd, 13th, 41st and 42nd.
The alderman did his best in the 13th Ward on the Southwest Side that was home to former Speaker of the House Michael Madigan’s powerful ward organization. Reilly won that ward by 12 percentage points, unofficial results showed, followed closely by the 42nd Ward, the downtown area Reilly currently represents in the City Council.
Still, despite the incumbent’s wide vote margin, Reilly was one of Preckwinkle’s toughest campaign challenges to date.
In a brief concession speech at his election night party in River North, Reilly said his commitment to the city and county was “unbroken” and that he hoped the Democratic Party would remember what he called its core responsibilities: “safety and easier access to basic government services.”
Hover over the map to see the vote share for each candidate in precincts throughout the city or use the search function to find results in your precinct.
The board president not only oversees the county’s 17-member Board of Commissioners, but also the budgets of the county’s massive criminal justice system and property tax offices, its hospitals and clinics, land bank and forest preserves. Unofficially, the president is the taskmaster for projects and problems that span the county’s other offices, including the sometimes-fractious personalities of its leaders.
Reilly, though, attacked Preckwinkle’s competence, highlighting the troubled and costly rollout of the county’s upgraded property tax system and problems with electronic monitoring of accused criminals.
He’s also tried to tie her to the political rise of former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Preckwinkle’s former chief of staff, and Mayor Brandon Johnson, whom Preckwinkle supported in his first election to the Cook County Board in 2018.
Reilly was a longtime critic of Foxx — endorsing her Republican challenger, Pat O’Brien, in the 2020 election — and frequently butts heads with Johnson. Reilly was part of the coalition that backed an alternate budget to the mayor late last year.
While Reilly found broad support from the county’s business community, the firefighters union and, as of last week, the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 7, representing Chicago police officers, Preckwinkle runs the county’s Democratic Party and rounded up dozens of endorsements from fellow elected officials, progressive labor unions and faith leaders.
