as a seminary student always cast a more principled tone to his politics than is typical of other ward bosses of his era. The older Hynes is definitely a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine and one of the last great practitioners of its system. Just the same, he never seemed cut from quite the same cloth as other party leaders who saw elective office primarily as a way to heighten their earnings potential.

People thought Tom Hynes would be a U.S. senator or governor or Chicago mayor some day. As his son observed, however, "the timing just never worked out."

Some of the timing problems were personal and others political. Tom Hynes rose to president of the state Senate at a young age but abandoned Springfield in 1978 to run for Cook County assessor; a post he held for 18 years. He came back home to the powerful but obscure assessor's job to spend more time with his young family, then stayed put partly because he was boxed in by the success of two popular Chicago mayors: Harold Washington and Richard M. Daley.

A cautious man by nature, Tom Hynes took one big gamble in politics - and failed spectacularly. In 1986, he formed the Chicago First Party and mounted a third party bid to oust Washington, the city's first African-American mayor. Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak, who had been the Cook County Democratic chairman, had entered the race as a Republican. The campaign was brutal and Hynes' image had suffered greatly by the time he withdrew just before the election.

With that background, it's easier to gauge what Dan Hynes means when he says, "I think our dad just tried to protect us or shield us from the political world when we were growing up because it's not always a pretty thing. There's a lot of negativity to it, a lot of attacking."

Then he adds,"There was no subtle pressure or just kind of lifelong persuasion to go into politics, in fact, just the opposite.

"And there's absolutely no sense of him living through me or having me do what he wasn't able to do. He would be just as happy if I stayed in the private practice of law and became a success that way."

Explains Tom: "It's not that I didn't feel politics and government was a noble calling. It is a noble profession in our society. But it's also very difficult."

Dan's mother, Judy, made the case against politics even more strongly to her children. She admits that her surprise about Dan's entry into the comptroller's race may have been caused by wishful thinking.

"I just think it's a very difficult life," she says. ""Your time is not your own. It's very hard on your family. Your children are singled out growing up.

Even Dan's birth order the third of four children and the second oldest son - didn't fit the mold of someone inheriting a political legacy, which historically fell to the firstborn son.

In hindsight, though, there was probably an inevitability about where this father-son relationship would lead.

Already, Dan Hynes has shown that his timing is better than his father's, even if there's a large element of blind luck. If young Hynes had come of age a decade earlier and wanted to run for comptroller, his candidacy would have been doomed because of the raw feelings in Chicago left over from that 1987 mayoral race. As it was, none of that caused a blip in his 1998 campaign. His decision to set his sights early on the comptroller's race also proved fortuitous, even though that initially meant he would be running against incumbent Loleta Didrickson, a moderate Republican woman who would have been heavily favored. When Gov. Jim Edgar decided to retire, though, the resulting domino effect on the Republican ticket played right into Hynes' hand, with Didrickson making an ill-fated run for the U.S. Senate nomination and little-known state Sen. Chris Lauzen stepping in as the Republican comp