{"id":190291,"date":"2026-02-23T18:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T18:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/190291\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T18:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T18:42:07","slug":"richard-bailey-the-latest-to-leave-gop-a-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/190291\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Bailey the Latest to Leave GOP: A Q&A"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post first appeared in the Politics Report. Become a Voice of San Diego member<\/a> today to get access to the weekly politics insider newsletter. <\/p>\n

Former Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey moved to Point Loma a few months ago and is now running for City Council in San Diego.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This will be a big fun City Council race and we\u2019ll be all over it but the Politics Report wanted to get some initial questions to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Politics Report: There are a few interesting questions that come up right away. Obviously, you just moved to the district. How do you plan on communicating to people about why you\u2019re set up to represent them well?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cI would simply say it seems that there\u2019s widespread opposition about what\u2019s occurring at San Diego City Hall, and people are hungry for a change in leadership, and I think they look to cities like the city of Coronado, which has kind of been a model for good governance, and I think my experience gives me an advantage over the other candidates in terms of being able to deliver the change that voters want to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finances? That seems like what you want to really make your mark framing and talking about?<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cYeah, I think everything really starts and stops with the city\u2019s budget situation. Between the budget situation and also the city\u2019s desire to kind of bail themselves out of some poor financial decisions on the backs of everyday San Diegans through things like the parking fees at Balboa Park. To me this is just another example of bad governance, and it\u2019s caused a lot of people to raise questions about the decisions City Hall is making. And so a combination of right sizing city hall and stopping the nickel and dime-ing of San Diego residents is where I think the voters want their leadership to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you leave the Republican Party?<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cI am a registered [no party preference], yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

When did that happen?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cI changed my registration yesterday (Feb. 19).\u201d<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cOh, the thought process?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cI think if you go back and like look through just about all of my public commentary, of all the videos, tweets, social media, posts I\u2019ve made, over the years, not just recently, but like over my 12 years, four years on the City Council and eight years as mayor, you\u2019re hard pressed to find many partisan comments that are\u2026 where I talk about red or blue, Republican or Democrat. I like policy, and I think that there\u2019s this growing appetite amongst people across the political spectrum for just good policy, and leaving the politics off the table. I mean, we\u2019re seeing that right now with a lot of voters, regardless of whether they registered as Democrats or Republicans.They\u2019re just dissatisfied with the current state of the city. And they\u2019re, they want someone that I think is a serious leader, that cares more about policy than politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have any plans to become a Democrat, though?<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey (laughs): \u201cI do not have any plans to re-register with any political party. No.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think this is really interesting. You will have some success connecting with people about frustration with the city, maybe development plans, and ideas, infrastructure problems. Obviously, though, when they think about national politics, there\u2019s this pretty significant antipathy toward Donald Trump and the movement that he\u2019s led. Is that something you have supported and do not support anymore?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cI would simply say that, and this isn\u2019t meant to be a dodge, this is just a, this is a local race. People care about local issues. It wasn\u2019t the president that blew up the city of San Diego\u2019s budget. It wasn\u2019t the president who passed the trash fees, or the Balboa Park parking fees.It was the mayor of San Diego and the City Council. It always seems like the media wants to ask about thoughts on what the president is doing at the national level, even though San Diego voters are extremely dissatisfied with the direction the city of San Diego is going. And it seems that it would be more fair to ask the other candidates, well, \u2018what are your thoughts on how Mayor Gloria is performing or how the City Council is performing on these issues that we\u2019re actually campaigning to have some say in?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

I sympathize with that. I think we both know that the biggest thing you\u2019re going to have to overcome is whatever connection, however tenuous they might make it, between you and the president or you and the MAGA movement. I think people do see their leaders at, at every level of, as having to think about these things and represent them in that way that they might prefer on those issues. And there are local things. There\u2019s the potential for more significant immigration raids, oil drilling off the coast, the border and tariffs and all kinds of stuff. Is there anything you could tell us about how you feel about those things and about how the president is leading things?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cAll those issues you mentioned are outside the purview of local government, and they\u2019re outside the purview of any of the nine councilmembers that will be sitting at the dais after November. So this campaign is just going to exclusively be about the local issues. I think I bring a lot to the table in terms of my knowledge and understanding of where the city\u2019s budget is at right now, and my willingness to offer positions to solve the city\u2019s structural deficit problem that won\u2019t be popular inside City Hall but are certainly the right thing to do financially. And I think those are resonating with voters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t want to say anything up or down, thumbs up or down on how Trump has performed as the president or on the big discussion nationally?<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cI think that voters want to talk about San Diego.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the trash fee repeal, you had started a movement on that. Is that something you\u2019re still pursuing?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cYeah, very much so, and I think you\u2019ll be seeing an announcement here very, very shortly, like in a couple days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is there anything about the district in particular and things you want to focus on there that are going to be your priorities?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cAll politics is local. There\u2019s micro issues in every single neighborhood. Obviously, the Midway Rising proposal is going to be a big issue, and we\u2019ll see how that shakes out and the courts. The OB Pier and finding a way to get some money to get that reopened and hopefully, sometime in our lifetime. But once again everything kind of starts and stops with the city\u2019s overall financial condition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you support Midway Rising as it is proposed?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cI would say not as it is proposed, not as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

What would you like to see differently?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard Bailey: \u201cI think some changes need to be made. Right now, Rosecrans, as you and I know, it\u2019s a total cluster. Whether you\u2019re driving there at 5 a.m. or 5 p.m. and the idea that you can have that level of development without some other type of traffic mitigation, I think it\u2019s asking a lot of a lot of Point Loma residents. I\u2019d like to see some changes in the plan, as relates to, as relates to traffic, as relates to parking. I do think the Sports Arena site should be redeveloped. But I do have some issues with the process for which the Midway Rising project was awarded and we\u2019ll see if there\u2019s an opportunity to address that in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post first appeared in the Politics Report. Become a Voice of San Diego member today to get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[6214,89321,74,84,76,75],"class_list":["post-190291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-republican","tag-richard-bailey","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}