Jon Baliles at home in the Museum District (Photo by Jay Paul)
During Richmond’s blogging movement in the mid-2000s, Jon Baliles earned a reputation for clever, sometimes biting analysis of local media and politics at rivercityrapids.com, so much so that in 2008, newly elected Mayor L. Douglas Wilder hired him as a press aide.
Over the next decade, Baliles, the son of former Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, became a local prodigy, winning election to City Council in 2012 by taking out then-popular 1st District Councilman Bruce Tyler. He then gained considerable traction as a mayoral candidate in 2016 before bowing out and throwing his support behind eventual winner Levar Stoney. After a brief stint as a senior policy advisor for Stoney, he largely disappeared from local politics in 2018.
Now, Baliles is back with a weekly newsletter, RVA 5x5.
“I just felt like it was time to start sharing what I can, what I think is relevant,” Baliles says of RVA 5x5, which is shorthand for “loud and clear” in radio parlance.
The newsletter includes arts and lighter fare, but those are secondary to his trademark political commentary. In a 2,600-word breakdown of the Richmond Police Department’s arrest of two Guatemalan immigrants for allegedly plotting a mass shooting at Dogwood Dell on July 4, Baliles guides readers through a meticulously narrated timeline of events, concluding with Police Chief Gerald Smith’s response to a question from a reporter about whether the arrests led to increased security around the city on the Fourth. “No, it did not,” the chief said.
“So, Chief Smith knew about a mass shooting threat at Dogwood Dell on July 4th … didn’t warn the sold-out Diamond baseball game or our surrounding localities, or the police officers at the Dell that night that two men with automatic weapons were allegedly planning on creating mass casualties on a dreadful scale,” Baliles writes on Aug. 5. “How that kind of answer and mentality are possible from a professional law enforcement officer in charge of the public safety of our City — ANY city — is beyond words. It is downright frightening.”
Could his latest foray lead to another run for office? “I wouldn’t hold your breath,” Baliles says. “It’s just me calling balls and strikes.”
