Political legend has it that, after the 1990 election, House Republican leader Lee A. Daniels bumped into Dan Cronin at a cable television studio. Cronin, who lives in Elmhurst, had defeated Daniels' close friend, longtime state Rep. Gene Hoffman, in a bitter primary campaign, so Daniels used the opportunity to give Cronin a piece of his mind.

Cronin is now a state senator. His campaign manager in that first race against Hoffman was his younger brother Tom from Glen Ellyn. Among others, Tom managed the recent general election campaign of former county state's attorney and current Attorney General Jim Ryan. And these days, Tom is following in his big brother's footsteps by running for office, and by irritating the county's GOP establishment.

Tom did not endear himself to Republican powers in DuPage when he kicked off his bid for state's attorney last fall by calling for an independent investigation of the office that his former employer, Ryan, headed.

"I couldn't stand back any longer," Cronin declared days after a circuit court judge acquitted Rolando Cruz and raised questions about law enforcement's pursuit of the conviction for the 1983 rape and murder of Naperville resident Jeanine Nicarico.

Yet Cronin had defended Ryan from attack by Democrat Al Hofeldjust a year earlier. You could almost hear a collective gasp from loyalists in DuPage, the center of the GOP universe in Illinois.

The state's attorney candidate denies he engaged in political opportunism, but his recent moves have observers inside — and outside — the county wondering just who these Cronins are — and what they're after.

For the time being, Tom and Dan are after the state's attorney's office and a state Senate seat respectively. And, whether they like them or not, Republicans who know both say the brothers, with the backing of a family led by a deep-pocketed surgeon patriarch, are a force to be reckoned with.

The political grapevine has Dan, 36, running statewide, perhaps for the U.S. Senate. Tom, 32, is believed to covet the party chairmanship owned by Senate President James "Pate" Philip. Though the brothers deny it, some say the two men, from a prominent and successful Irish Catholic family with nine siblings, privately favor comparisons to the Democratic Kennedys. Or at the very least, they say, the Cronins are out to become the next Fawell family, a DuPage County clan whose members occupy key jobs throughout government.

"The difference is my family always worked within the Republican Party structure," says Scott Fawell, chief of staff for Secretary of State George H. Ryan. "The Cronins have challenged the system and run from the outside."

The Brothers Cronin brush aside questions about their long-term political ambitions, but tout their independence — to a point. "I think being an outside influence is healthy in many ways," Dan Cronin says. "We don't have a real two-party system in the county." Still, since his first upstart campaign, Dan voted for Daniels for leader and has taken the lead in pushing the most complex issues in the state Senate, including lawsuit, workers compensation and Chicago school reform.

Meanwhile, Tom, a litigation lawyer at the Winston and Strawn law firm led by former Gov. James R. Thompson, leaves his home early to meet voters at county train stations.

Tom and Dan are the candidates, but politics is a family affair. The Cronins' sister, Cynthia, the former Elmhurst treasurer, is Tom's campaign manager. And his mother once made 200 box lunches for volunteers during Dan's first Senate bid.

But will a hardworking, supportive family be enough if Cronin intimidates some with talk of professionalizing the state's attorney's office and starting a white-collar crime unit? "A lot of the criticism leveled at my brother — the lack of experience and not the right qualifications — those are the same things they said about me. It's almost creepy," says Dan.

"I proved them wrong and so will my brother. " *

Madeleine Doubek is political editor for the Daily Herald, a suburban metro newspaper. She has covered politics since 1988.

Illinois Issues January 1996 * 37