It worked.
Deleting is fine.
Dan, sorry to send you on a wild goose chase. When I changed the content_type to static_page to properly support the new search package, I changed it in the wrong place.
In the object type, the supertype was static_page which should have been content_revision.
In content_item__new the subtype was content_revision, it should have been content_item.
Thanks!
