Mayor wins; council, school races tighter

Coronado’s mayoral election was over before it began.

Incumbent Mayor Richard Bailey ran unopposed throughout most of the campaign — at least until local resident Kirk Hor vath launched a last-minute write-in campaig n in the middle of October. Predictably, early results show Bailey with 100 percent of the vote.

Coronado’s City Council and school board races have been sig nif icantly more competitive than the mayoral contest.

Four City Council candidates — one incumbent, one former mayor and two new challengers — ran for two seats.

Early results show former Mayor Casey Tanaka with a strong lead. Incumbent Councilman Mike Donovan is second, and attorney John Duncan is a close third. Small-business owner Tim Rohan trailed a distant four th, early results showed.

Two of Coronado’s biggest campaign issues were the pandemic, and the economic recovery from it, and the city ’s f ight with SANDAG over a housing allocation that would make Coronado responsible for nearly 1,000 housing units in the next eight years.

The top-two vote-getters will win a seat on the council. With roughly half of the votes counted Tuesday evening, Duncan could still skip ahead of Donovan.

In the Coronado Unif ied School District election, f ive candidates are competing for two seats on the school board. None of the candidates is an incumbent.

Early results show lawyer Whitney Antrim with a slight lead over sales executive Stacy Keszei. However, lawyer Alexia Palacios-Peters and Navy veteran Kenneth Canada are a close third and four th.

Early results show all four candidates within 600 votes of each other. The top two will win. Accountant Nick Kato is in f if th place.

Keszei and Canada were both relatively late additions to the ballot. Both decided to run in protest of the school district’s decision to suppor t the Black L ives Matter movement and look into adopting a more racially sensitive curriculum.

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