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City of Menlo Park · Statewide General Election

Menlo Park City Council, District 2

This is one contest. Enter your address to see every race on your November ballot, and keep track of your picks.

On the ballot

This person would represent one of Menlo Park's five council districts on the City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land-use decisions for Menlo Park. A 4-year term. The Mayor and Vice Mayor are chosen by the council from among its own members each year, rather than elected separately.

Councilmember Drew Combs -- a Meta attorney on the council since 2018, seeking a third term -- faces his first-ever challenger: Finance and Audit Commissioner and retired McKinsey strategy consultant Vamsi Velagapudi. Both live in District 2's Willows and Flood Park neighborhoods.

The winner serves a 4-year term as one of five district representatives on Menlo Park's City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use for the whole city. The Mayor and Vice Mayor are chosen by the council from among its own members each year, not elected separately, and Menlo Park council races have no primary -- Combs and Velagapudi go straight to the November 3 ballot.

The race turns partly on a contentious March 2026 council priority-setting meeting: Velagapudi, watching from the audience, says the three-and-a-half-hour session showed a council that spends more time debating what counts as a priority than reaching consensus -- a critique he says his McKinsey background could help fix. Combs counters that his willingness to be a lone dissenting vote -- including on how the city sited affordable housing on downtown parking lots -- is exactly the kind of independent voice the council needs. Both back building more housing to help the city meet state mandates, and both cite Menlo Park's structural budget deficit as a top concern.

Drew Combs

Combs is an attorney for Meta and a Harvard Law/Columbia graduate who worked as a journalist (The American Lawyer, Los Angeles Daily Journal) before moving into tech. He joined the council in 2018 after serving on the Bicycle and Planning Commissions, and points to the city's RV overnight-parking ban, capital improvements on Bay Road and the Middlefield/Woodland intersection, and Highway 101 landscaping as accomplishments from his two terms.

Strengths

Eight years of council experience plus prior Bicycle and Planning Commission service, and a specific, citable list of completed projects.

Trade-offs

The city's structural deficit and downtown-housing fight both developed on his watch; he says he was outvoted proposing alternative sites, but he helped put the current plan in motion.

Keep in mind

He describes himself as often the sole dissenting vote on the council and frames that as a strength -- voters should weigh whether they want a coalition-builder or a dissenter for a third term.

Vamsi Velagapudi

Velagapudi is a retired McKinsey & Company strategy consultant who also worked in banking (Lloyds, London) and at Google, Cisco, and HP; he holds an MBA from Bayes Business School in London. He's lived in Menlo Park for eight years and has served on the city's Finance and Audit Commission since April 2025, the East Palo Alto Sanitary District Advisory Committee since February 2026, and the Citizens' Bond Oversight Committee for the Menlo Park City School District's Measure U since March 2025.

Strengths

A management-consulting career spent advising large organizations on strategy, plus roughly two years of direct city-finance exposure through the Finance and Audit Commission.

Trade-offs

No experience in elected office and only about 16 months of appointed commission service -- his critique of council dysfunction is an outsider's read on one meeting, not a fix from the inside.

Keep in mind

He wants the city to raise revenue "without impacting struggling residents or small businesses" but hasn't specified how; like Combs, he backs more housing, framed around walkability and family life more than the parking-lot fight specifically.

Source review: Strong (84/100) · 8 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context; advocacy or endorsement sources are treated as attributed perspective.

Review note: Drew Combs's own campaign site (drewcombs.com): his 'Meet Drew' bio (Harvard Law, Columbia, journalism career, Bicycle and Planning Commission service) and endorsements page (Rep. Sam Liccardo, Assemblymember Marc Berman, Sen. Josh Becker, several county supervisors and former Menlo Park mayors); footer publishes FPPC ID 1491468 and Vamsi Velagapudi's own campaign site (votevamsi.com): his 'Meet Vamsi' bio (finance/strategy/tech career at Lloyds, McKinsey, Google, Cisco, HP; Finance and Audit Commission, East Palo Alto Sanitary District Advisory Committee, and MPCSD Measure U bond oversight service) and endorsements page (Vice Mayor Jennifer Wise, Councilmember Jeff Schmidt, several former Menlo Park mayors and county supervisors); no FPPC ID is published anywhere on the site this session could find may have more bias because they are advocacy voter guides compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

  • smcacre.gov (opens in a new tab)San Mateo County ACRE -- Roster of Candidates, Qualified Candidates Only, November 3, 2026 General Election (CFMR009), dated 2026-08-25: the county's own certified candidate list, naming all six qualified Menlo Park City Council candidates (Districts 1, 2, and 4), their filed occupations/ballot designations, and qualification dates, each flagged 'On Ballot: Yes, Vote for 1'
  • smcacre.gov (opens in a new tab)San Mateo County ACRE -- this dataset's own transcribed summary of the same CFMR009 roster's contest headers, confirming exactly three Menlo Park races are flagged 'On Ballot: Yes' this cycle (City Council Districts 1, 2, and 4) and none else
  • almanacnews.com (opens in a new tab)The Almanac (Arden Margulis) -- "Council races at a glance: Atherton, Menlo Park, Portola Valley and Woodside" (July 23, 2026; updated July 24): staff-bylined roundup naming all three Menlo Park districts up this cycle, each district's boundary description, that Districts 1 and 4 are open seats (incumbents Cecilia Taylor and Mayor Betsy Nash each not seeking reelection) while Councilmember Drew Combs seeks reelection in District 2, and that Menlo Park council elections have no primary
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia's Menlo Park, California article -- confirms the City Council is 'elected in districts to staggered four-year terms, in nonpartisan municipal elections,' that the Mayor and Vice Mayor are chosen from among council members rather than separately elected (one-year terms since 1976), and the city's 2020 census population of 33,780
  • cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)This dataset's own documented record of a dedicated, unsuccessful attempt to retrieve campaign-finance filings for all six Menlo Park City Council candidates: California's Cal-Access filer search (cal-access.sos.ca.gov) returned only an Incapsula bot-detection interstitial for every query attempted this session (via both WebFetch and direct curl), with no live browser session available in this worktree to work around it. Documents the absence of a reachable financial-disclosure source for these six candidates, not any of their actual finances.
  • almanacnews.com (opens in a new tab)The Almanac (Arden Margulis) -- "Finance commissioner challenges Combs for Menlo Park City Council seat" (May 14, 2026; updated July 20, 2026): dedicated, quote-based profile of both District 2 candidates -- Combs's tenure since 2018, his work as a Meta attorney, his record (the RV overnight-parking ban, Willow Oaks Park, Bay Road, Highway 101 landscaping) and his stance on the downtown parking-lot housing plan; Velagapudi's McKinsey/Google/Cisco/HP career, his Finance and Audit Commission service, and his critique of the council's March 2026 priority-setting meeting
  • drewcombs.com (opens in a new tab)Drew Combs's own campaign site (drewcombs.com): his 'Meet Drew' bio (Harvard Law, Columbia, journalism career, Bicycle and Planning Commission service) and endorsements page (Rep. Sam Liccardo, Assemblymember Marc Berman, Sen. Josh Becker, several county supervisors and former Menlo Park mayors); footer publishes FPPC ID 1491468
  • votevamsi.com (opens in a new tab)Vamsi Velagapudi's own campaign site (votevamsi.com): his 'Meet Vamsi' bio (finance/strategy/tech career at Lloyds, McKinsey, Google, Cisco, HP; Finance and Audit Commission, East Palo Alto Sanitary District Advisory Committee, and MPCSD Measure U bond oversight service) and endorsements page (Vice Mayor Jennifer Wise, Councilmember Jeff Schmidt, several former Menlo Park mayors and county supervisors); no FPPC ID is published anywhere on the site this session could find

Last updated September 1, 2026.