By all accounts, Provo mayoral candidate David Bailey is not a hip-hop star.

Yet there he was Saturday night, taking the stage at “The Biggest Party,” a hip-hop dance party featuring 12 local bands and some 1,500 students.

Bailey was an invited guest of Something Local Productions, a Provo-based promo company that hosted the gala.

Dennison Harris, a BYU student who heads up Something Local, announced Bailey’s cameo with a ringing endorsement: “[Bailey] is pro-student, and he’s against the booting laws as much as we are. He also thinks it’s great that students can get together and have parties and watch bands in a social setting without the cops breaking it up.”

Even so, Bailey crashed the party late Saturday to prime his prospective campaign – which will officially kick off sometime in July – and to urge students to get out and vote come November.

“The students here don’t realize how much power they have,” Bailey said. “A unified vote by only a few thousand students from any of the local colleges could secure a vote for nearly any decision or candidate they could imagine.”

During his brief speech, Bailey addressed student concerns over booting and traffic policies in Provo as an anti-booting petition circulated among the crowd.

Bailey, a recently retired fireman, ran an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2001 against Lewis K. Billings – an election, he said, that was decided by less than a thousand votes.

“There were only 10,000 people that voted and the guy that won [Billings], won with just over 5,000,” Bailey said. “Now, if you can win with 5,000 votes and you’ve got 30,000 students [at BYU], almost all of them eligible to vote, you could own Provo.”

By law, BYU students who are living in Provo for 30 days before an election can change residency and register to vote, said Sandy Hoffman, Utah County Elections Coordinator.

However, Hoffmann cautions that students who become Utah residents could lose financial aid if it’s based on their out-of-state residency.

Still, Bailey said the benefits for a block of students voting in Provo would be substantial, to say the least.

“You wouldn’t have to worry about booting,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to worry about dance parties being broken up by the police. You could own Provo.”

Bailey also said he would support more space for parking south of campus, a move that could potentially relieve the mounting tensions between students and residents there.

“I don’t care if a landlord rents to more than three students so long as he’s got parking space for them and their guests, and that’s off-street parking,” Bailey said.

He even toys with the idea of overhauling the soon-to-be-vacant Joaquin Elementary School as a multi-level parking lot, co-ventured by Provo City and BYU.

But even with all his pro-student proposals, Bailey said he’s being realistic about his chances among “student voters” – an oxymoron if you look at the returns from 2001 – keeping student issues at the periphery of his platform.

And who could blame him.

In the last mayoral election, only 15 students turned out to vote at the BYU precinct.

Chances are, Bailey said, it’s the citizens who will drive any change – for better or worse – to the student status quo.

“Ultimately, I’m hoping that what happens is that the citizens see what’s happening to the students and realize, ‘Hey, we’ve got to provide for these students,’” Bailey said.

Provo city spokeswoman Raylene Ireland said other candidates for both city council and mayor, including the incumbent, Billings, have yet to announce any campaign plans for November’s election.

Billings could not be reached for comment.



Copyright Brigham Young University 13 Apr 2005