Fritz Kaegi won’t be serving a third term as Cook County Assessor. Kaegi, who has lived in Oak Park since 2010, was defeated in the March 17 Democratic primary by Lyons Township Assessor Pat Hynes. Kaegi’s time as assessor will come to an end in December after two terms in office.
“I’m really grateful for all the elected officials, like our two U.S. Senators, eight members of Congress as well, and all the neighbors and others who supported us and believe in what we’re doing to reform the property tax system. The work is bigger than any one campaign,” Kaegi told Wednesday Journal in a telephone interview. “It’s just about making sure that the tax system works for Cook County instead of special interests and big corporations.”
Hynes, who is the nephew of former Cook County Assessor Tom Hynes and a cousin of former Illinois State Comptroller Dan Hynes, defeated Kaegi by a little less 26,000 votes racking up 52% of the vote.
Hynes’s win was powered by a strong performance in suburban Cook County where he won 56% of the vote. Kaegi received just over 51% of the vote in the city of Chicago. Hynes did exceptionally well in the south suburbs.
Kaegi carried Oak Park by a nearly two to one margin racking up 9,540 votes (65.35%) to 5,058 votes (34.65%) for Hynes. Kaegi also carried River Forest handedly winning 59.93% of the vote.
But Kaegi was hurt, even in Oak Park, by voters upset by rising taxes and rising assessments. Assessments recently increased a great deal on the South and West Sides of Chicago and in the south suburbs. Chicago properties were reassessed in 2025 and the south suburbs were reassessed in 2024. The assessments, and hence the taxes, on many homes in areas like Austin dramatically increased, driven in part, by lower assessments of downtown commercial properties whose owners often won big reductions in their property taxes by appealing their assessments to the Cook County Board of Review.
“I liked Kaegi for years but with the Chicago assessing that was super high and whether he was exactly responsible or not he was the one in office,” said Ken Ziganto of Oak Park after voting for Hynes at Mann School in Oak Park where Hynes’s wife, Margaret, was passing out literature to voters on primary day.
Kaegi said rising tax bills upset voters.
“It was an uphill battle for us when tax bills came out, for sure,” Kaegi said. “And people are rightly frustrated with rising tax bills, and there was a lot of money spent to make sure that the frustration was directed as us even though we might not be responsible for it. Yeah, when you’re trying to reform a broken system you don’t make a lot of friends and we had the full weight of the political machine working against us and the real estate industry, you know, spending over $100,000 to direct the blame at us.”
Kaegi said he understood the frustrations of taxpayers but put the blame on the Cook County Board of Review which rules on property tax appeals.
“We tried to make this campaign about how corporate tax breaks get shifted in to homeowners, but it’s hard to be the most visible person in the tax system and trying to explain how tax is spiked because another governing body that most people have never heard of,” Kaegi said. “It’s complicated and what could get lost is that I’ve been the guy who, more than anyone else, has been fighting for average homeowners against the interests that would like to shift more burden on to them. So you know they say in politics that if you’re explaining you’re losing and the system’s complicated.”
Hynes had the endorsement of the Cook County Democratic Party. State Senate Don Harmon and the Democratic Party of Oak Park stayed neutral in the race and didn’t endorse either candidate although Harmon had supported and voted for Kaegi in the Cook County Democratic Party’s slate making session. Harmon declined to say who he voted for in the primary.
The race was an expensive one. Kaegi’s campaign committee, Friends for Fritz, raised more than $1 million. Kaegi made two personal loans to his campaign, totaling $750,000 last year.
During the campaign Hynes characterized himself as a real estate professional and criticized Kaegi’s management of the office saying at a February meeting of the Democratic Party of Oak Park, where both he and Kaegi spoke, that the assessor’s office under Kaegi was “inefficient and terribly run” and made “egregious mistake after egregious mistake.”
Kaegi grew up in Hyde Park. Prior to being elected Cook County Assessor in 2018 after defeating incumbent assessor Joseph Berrios in the Democratic primary Kaegi worked in the investment world as a portfolio manager for a mutual funds and before that as an equity analyst.
Kaegi will remain in office until December. No Republican filed to run for assessor in the Republican primary so as of now Hynes’s only opponent in the November general election is Libertarian Party candidate Michael Murphy.
“I am focused on finishing my term,” Kaegi said.
Kaegi said he was proud of what he has been able to accomplish in his nearly 8 years as assessor.
“We cleaned up an office that was notorious for corruption and made it clean, without any trace of scandal,” Kaegi said.
Kaegi said he believed he helped make the assessment process fairer.