A campaign text message hit phones Friday with a striking claim: “No more overdevelopment! Richard Bailey will stop the Midway Rising mega-development, limit ADUs, and stop city hall politicians from destroying our communities.”
The mailer was paid for by Steven Richter, the resident who poured money into an effort to support Larry Turner for mayor in 2024,
This was interesting because we’ve tracked Bailey on Midway Rising for months now and, while he was at first saying pretty harsh things about it, he seemed to be settling into a it’s-not-my-favorite-but-what-are-you-going-to-do message.
Also, now that a deal has been struck on the two issues he has campaigned on the most — repealing the trash fee and paid parking at Balboa Park — we did wonder if Midway Rising would take the top spot on his issues list.
It doesn’t look like it. We asked Bailey to comment on the text messages. Here was his written response:
“The Sports Arena site desperately needs to be redeveloped but there are legitimate concerns that the scale of a 4K+ unit mixed use redevelopment will impact the surrounding area. The state surplus lands act incentivizes higher density development while limiting local input – this is not right. As a Councilmember, my goal will be to help make redevelopment of Sports Arena a success for the site and minimize impact to the surrounding neighborhood to the greatest extent allowed by law. I’ll also push for reforms to the Surplus Land Act that allow for greater local input on future projects,” Bailey wrote.
Bailey will likely fail running for D2 anyways. He’ll have to redefine his message going forward or move to another district.
Wow, talk about misreading the D2 room, I stand corrected with the current results.
Dem vote is being split right now.
So is the Gloria types vs. reformers, which includes Mandy Havlik.
Sounds like everything Bailey has been wanting to do has already been undone. Now he needs to come up with something new, otherwise he has no grounds.
Richard Bailey is a MAGA carpetbagger who will grab onto any hot button issues and present himself as the only solution. District Two, he doesn’t care a whit about any of you or your community. He is fixated on himself, full stop.
Don’t know why VOSD seems to want to cover the guy who left Coronado beaches full of sewage by his inaction and combative style refusing to work with other cities and even with his own community. He’s never had a job either – so who’s his daddy? Christian nationalists, anti-gay patrons, that’s who. Coronado hates him.
Maybe because VOSD is supposed to cover city politics from an unbiased point of view.