CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — The first woman to serve as Mayor in Clarksburg’s history isn’t ready to go gently into that good night.
“The last two years, I had a decision to make,” Margaret Bailey said Thursday on “The Gary Bowden Show” on the AJR News Network. “One, I could sit home and feel sorry for myself. Or, I could get up and get busy. So I decided to get up and get busy.”
As part of the AJR News Network’s ongoing series to preview and interview all ten candidates for Clarksburg City Council, Margaret Bailey joined “The Gary Bowden Show” to make her case for why she should return to City Council after a disappointing sixth place finish in 2015.
“My life has been built around service,” Bailey said. “I feel that I need to come back to the City to help and to give and to share my expertise.”
Since her 2015 defeat, Bailey has been elected President of the Harrison County Senior Center’s Board of Directors. She has also spent time working with the Women’s Club of Clarksburg and lobbying for the construction of a veteran’s memorial in the city. While those are important issues to her, she said the next iteration of City Council will need to address any citizen concerns about the upcoming Robinson Grand Performing Arts Center.
“It’s a huge investment,” Bailey said. “I do want to look at the financials. I want to look at what kind of investments–people are questioning that. So I think, in all fairness, people deserve to know again that this is money either that needs to be trimmed or is well spent. I want to be able to do that.”
Bailey said she wants to make sure that citizens have confidence in their local officials. More abstractly, she cited “hope” as they main reason she is running.
“To see a glimmer of hope start to develop,” she said. “This is one of the things that I see is so badly needed in our city.”
“So many people don’t have hope. And when you don’t have hope, you don’t have growth. You don’t have progress. You don’t have the things happen which you want to see happen.”
Bailey is one of seven challengers in the race. The challengers are joined by three incumbents who are battling for four open seats. She is the third candidate highlighted by The AJR News Network in this series.
The election is June 6.
Read more about challenger Marshall Goff here and incumbent Robert Kaplan here.