By Scott Lewis / Voice of San Diego / June 1, 2026
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.
Well, it sounds to me, like he’s going to do the best he can.
While Steyer, promises to lower SDG&E electric prices 25%, and several other impossible things he says he WILL do, someone should have told him SDG&E is privately owned and I’m sure he won’t be telling the private stock holders what to do.