Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Dan Hynes took a risk late last week launching a TV commercial featuring 1987 video of then-Chicago Mayor Harold Washington ripping Pat Quinn, now Illinois’ governor and Hynes’ primary foe.

“Pat Quinn is a totally and completely undisciplined individual who thinks that government is nothing but a large easel on which he can do his PR work,” Washington says in an interview taped in the weeks before his death of a heart attack. “My only regret is that we hired him (as city revenue director) and kept him too long. My greatest mistake in government in terms of an appointment.”

The risk was injecting the ever-volatile issue of race into a campaign between two white, Irish-American guys.

Washington, a Democrat, was Chicago’s first African-American mayor and was vigorously opposed by many in the white establishment including Hynes’ father, Cook County Assessor Thomas Hynes, who went so far as to mount a third-party challenge to Washington’s re-election bid.

Commenter “Sam E.” at the Capitol Fax blog imagined a response ad from Quinn showing footage of the Northwest Side bigots who rallied against Washington and a voice-over saying:

“Pat Quinn stood with Harold Washington for change and hope, while Dan Hynes and his father stood with the forces who tried to divide us. . . . Now, two decades later, Dan Hynes is seeking to divide us once again. . . . “

Quinn’s likely now to hammer much harder on the fact that Hynes opposed Barack Obama in the crowded 2004 Democratic U.S. Senate primary. And, if Quinn’s news conference, studded with star African-American politicians Friday morning, is any indication, he may be able to whip up extra black support by portraying the Hynes commercial as an insult to the memory of the beloved Harold Washington.

Careful viewers will note, however, that race is not the theme of Hynes’ attack on Quinn. The theme is competence. And for all that, the ad may remind black voters of the unpleasant Hynes family legacy from the 1980s, but it will also remind black and white Democratic primary voters of their main doubt about Quinn — not his heart, his passion or his fundamental integrity, but his competence.

Never mind who ran against whom when or who’s playing the race card. Voters are going to want to know this: Was Washington right in 1987 that Quinn was a goof-up who just wanted to agitate for his causes? And, either way, what has Quinn done in the interim to show that Washington judged him too hastily?

Did Hynes need to take that risk? Go for the game-changer that looks a bit like a Hail Mary pass? Earlier polls showed him trailing badly, but the new Tribune/WGN-TV poll released this weekend shows that, before the Washington commercial was released, the race had tightened to a near statistical deadlock.

The days between now and voting on Feb. 2 should be awfully interesting.