Rich Miller covered Dan Hynes’ future a couple weeks ago in a good column.
While it might not seem like it to some of his campaign workers from the Senate primary, I really like Dan Hynes. He’s smart, honest by all accounts, and has been a strong steward of the state finances through two guys who always were looking for the easy way out.
What was baffling about about the Senate Primary campaign was why he ran without a reason. I’m sure he had strong reasons to run, but he certainly didn’t communicate them very well. His commercials with his wife were awful. Both are telegenic, but they had no chemistry together and I didn’t even realize it was his wife on first viewing even though I had seen pictures of her before. Most strange about this is that they are very close and apparently adore each other, but somehow in the handling, it all got lost.
With the primary loss the biggest problem is now where to go. There simply aren’t open slots. The Senate seats are filled for years. The Governor’s race in 2010 is going to feature Lisa Madigan at least and while they’d be evenly matched, who wants to take a chance on that sort of bruising race. Congress would be somewhat of a step down for him from being a statewide office holder. He could move up to Secretary of State when Jesse retires or AG, but that is an awful long wait for a guy who was nicknamed Governor in waiting.