March 11, 2004

BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Staff Reporter

The final debate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on Wednesday showed the fight is no longer Barack Obama and Dan Hynes taking on Blair Hull. It's Hynes vs. Obama and Hull battling his own past.

Revelations about domestic abuse in his divorce dropped Hull from front-runner to third place. Anew Hull admission that he twice checked himself in to alcohol rehabilitation probably won't help.

Obama, meanwhile, has shot up as high as 20 percentage points ahead of Hynes and Hull, according to the latest polls. So Hynes opened Wednesday's debate by attacking Obama, his former ally:

"When George Ryan was leading our state into a fiscal ditch, I took him on," Hynes said. "I often stood alone. That's what leaders do. Barack Obama chose a different course. He stayed silent. He didn't do anything."

Obama said it was Hynes who sat "on the sidelines" as Obama fought Ryan in Springfield.

"Dan mentioned earlier about George Ryan's budget.... I've actually passed laws that helped to provide tax relief for working families. Twenty thousand children have health care this year that didn't have it last year because of a law I passed. On all of these issues, I've actually delivered."

Hynes staffers were seen passing out anti-Obama literature that did not bear the Hynes campaign logo.

Responding to a newly resurrected passage from Obama's autobiography in which the state senator admits using cocaine as a teen, Hull said after the debate, "I have not used any illegal drug in a substantial amount of time."

But pressed further by WBBM-Channel 2 about whether he checked himself in to a substance abuse program, Hull said he thought he might be an alcoholic, so in the late 1970s and again in the mid-1980s he checked himself in to an outpatient program and concluded he did not have a problem.

Hynes and Gery Chico admitted using marijuana in college.

Contributing: Cheryl V. Jackson