Democrat Pat Hynes won the Cook County Assessor race on Tuesday, Nov. 3, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, citing the Associated Press.
The AP declared Hynes the winner as of 9:19 p.m., according to the Sun-Times results page.
Hynes defeated Libertarian Nico Tsatsoulis. With about 43% of estimated votes counted when the AP called the race, Hynes held 84.9% of the vote, the Chicago Tribune reported. Block Club Chicago reported Hynes secured 86% to Tsatsoulis' 14%.
The assessor calculates the value of every property in Cook County. Those valuations, along with levies from local governments and the county's array of tax breaks and incentives, determine what each property owner pays, according to the Tribune.
What Hynes promised
Hynes campaigned on making assessments more predictable after back-to-back years of record increases under outgoing Assessor Fritz Kaegi, the Tribune reported. He pledged to offer near certainty for developers by creating a system that could estimate a property's likely assessment based on neighborhood, size and classification.
Hynes beat Kaegi in the spring Democratic primary. Block Club reported that Hynes is the Lyons Township assessor and previously spent more than 20 years working in the Cook County Assessor's Office. He ran on a platform to make the county's property tax system more equitable and transparent, Block Club reported.
Big business interests, including building owners, developers and property tax attorneys, lined up behind Hynes, who secured party endorsements over the summer, according to the Tribune. Trade labor unions also backed him. Kaegi put roughly $2.75 million into his own race since the start of 2025, according to state records cited by the Tribune.
Background on the office
Kaegi shifted assessments after taking office in late 2018 to account for what the Tribune described as systemic undervaluing of commercial buildings and overvaluation of low-income properties. During the pandemic, he instituted a "COVID adjustment" reducing residential values. That adjustment later wore off as the housing market boomed and the commercial market remained scarred by vacancy, the Tribune reported.
Tsatsoulis is a real estate professional who previously ran for assessor in 2022 and the Cook County Board of Review in 2024, according to Block Club.
Evanston connection
Evanston's City Council on Oct. 12 approved a no-cost agreement with the Cook County Assessor's Office for access to geographic information system data, according to council minutes. The resolution passed 7-0-2 on the consent agenda.
Hynes will inherit a fully adopted Tyler Technologies system that shares property data across most of the county's other tax offices, annual assessment audits and a recent agreement with the Board of Review to adopt some of the same baseline calculations, the Tribune reported.
