Richard Bailey is not saying whether he plans to run for City Council in San Diego, but the former Coronado mayor has moved to Point Loma, launched a social media campaign on city governance and is leading tours that focus on “Policy Over Politics” in California’s second-largest metropolis.
Bailey, who became Coronado’s youngest mayor at 30, and served two terms ending in 2024, recently moved after 16 years as an island resident.
He is also among roughly 7,000 people worldwide who have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Last year while mayor, he spent over a month conquering the tallest peak on Earth.
During the tour he conducts in San Diego, Bailey discusses what he calls “common sense policies” on issues such as taxation, city services and budgets.
The former mayor (who is a member of The Coronado News’ editorial board, which operates independently of the paper’s news coverage) has been posting videos about local issues on social media, where he’s garnered over 22,000 Instagram followers and around 500,000 views a month across all platforms.
When asked directly whether he is planning to run for San Diego City Council, or some other office, Bailey said: “I’m not planning on making an announcement anytime soon.”
“I just really love public policy, and I think that there is an appetite in the public for, kind of, common sense policy discussion that’s centered around the policy and not political parties or politicians,” he added.
Bailey said that activism has been a continuation and extension of what he has been doing since the beginning of his political career, just on a bigger platform to a larger audience about regional issues as opposed to Coronado-centric issues.
I think the partisanship of politics is exhausting, and also just a very unproductive way to live your life, if your self-identity is tied up in your party affiliation.
Richard Bailey
“I think the partisanship of politics is exhausting, and also just a very unproductive way to live your life, if your self-identity is tied up in your party affiliation,” Bailey said.
He is pushing for policy over politics. Bailey also has a history of being associated with the Republican party.
Bailey ran for Congress as a Republican in 2022 but did not appear on the ballot for the primary in June 2022.
In 2020 and 2021, Bailey donated to the Republican Party of San Diego County, and in 2024, donated to a few Republican congressional candidates, including Kate Monroe and Steve Garvey, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Policies in San Diego
In April, he created a website called Common Good SD, which focuses on “core city responsibilities,” according to its page.
He’s also been sending campaign-style mail to residents where he says San Diego is in a “structural deficit,” something he doubles down on to The Coronado News.
Bailey said one of the biggest challenges facing San Diego is its financial mismanagement.
“It’s important for our region to have a well-functioning city of San Diego, and unfortunately, they really just haven’t been,” he added. “Even based on their own internal performance metrics, San Diego’s falling short on just about everything.”
Bailey said he’s been doing research on his own, looking at budgets from the past two decades and key performance indicators, also known as KPI’s, to understand how the city is doing financially.
“When you look at each one of those performance indicators … it’s worse than ever,” he said. “I think it’s largely due to the priorities, the current leadership … and I think the city has attempted to focus on areas that are really outside the lane of typical local responsibilities.”
The former mayor said an emphasis on new government-mandated housing and dealing with homelessness has taken away from true priorities.
He said San Diego’s social programs have turned into a massive budgetary expense with very little results to show for it.
Never say never
But with all that being said, Bailey said he has no plans to run for office in the near future.
I had no desire to get back into politics when I left the mayor’s office in Coronado. It’s not something that was on my radar at all. But, good policy interest me because policy affects our day-to-day lives. It doesn’t matter what political party’s in charge — if they pass bad policies, we’re all worse off for it.
Richard Bailey
“I had no desire to get back into politics when I left the mayor’s office in Coronado,” he said. “It’s not something that was on my radar at all. But, good policy interests me because policy affects our day-to-day lives. It doesn’t matter what political party’s in charge – if they pass bad policies, we’re all worse off for it.”
However, he says he does feel a sense of civic responsibility and obligation, and if there seems to be a desire for a candidate like him who’s focused on “common-sense, good governance, back to the basics-type policies,” he would want to step up and run.
Bailey said that if that were to happen, he would want to run for local office again. He mentioned that potential offices would include a San Diego City Council seat that’s open in 2026 or mayor of San Diego that would be open in 2028.
The former mayor also has a few businesses, including a beach rental business in the area.
In the meantime, Bailey has been preparing to summit another mountain in January, this time, the highest peak in Antarctica, Mount Vincent.
