# Menlo Park City Council, District 2 Compare records and positions simply between Drew Combs or Vamsi Velagapudi for Menlo Park City Council, District 2 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would represent one of Menlo Park's five council districts on the City Council. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land-use decisions for Menlo Park. The term is four years. The Mayor and Vice Mayor are chosen by the council from among its own members each year, rather than elected separately. - Jurisdiction: City of Menlo Park - Election: November 3, 2026 California general election - Publisher: Vote or Else (https://voteorelse.com) — a free, nonpartisan ballot guide for California voters. No endorsements. - Canonical page: https://voteorelse.com/2026/menlo-park-council-2 - Full ballot: this page covers one race. Every contest on a voter's own ballot, by address, with the same breakdown for each: https://voteorelse.com/ - Sources last retrieved: September 1, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 84 out of 100 (Strong), across 8 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Drew Combs** — Menlo Park City Councilmember · Incumbent - **Vamsi Velagapudi** — Community Volunteer A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Councilmember Drew Combs is a Meta attorney who has been on the council since 2018. He is seeking a third term and faces his first-ever challenger. That challenger is Vamsi Velagapudi, a Finance and Audit Commissioner and retired McKinsey strategy consultant. 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. They vote on 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 and Columbia graduate. He worked as a journalist at The American Lawyer and the Los Angeles Daily Journal. He then moved into tech. He joined the council in 2018 after serving on the Bicycle and Planning Commissions. He points to accomplishments from his two terms. They include the city's RV overnight-parking ban and capital improvements on Bay Road. He also cites the Middlefield and Woodland intersection and Highway 101 landscaping. **Strengths:** Eight years of council experience plus prior Bicycle and Planning Commission service. He also has 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. He 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. He also worked in banking at Lloyds in London and at Google, Cisco, and HP. He holds an MBA from Bayes Business School in London. He has lived in Menlo Park for eight years. He has served on the city's Finance and Audit Commission since April 2025. He joined the East Palo Alto Sanitary District Advisory Committee in February 2026. He has also served on the Citizens' Bond Oversight Committee since March 2025. That committee covers the Menlo Park City School District's Measure U. **Strengths:** A management-consulting career spent advising large organizations on strategy. He also has 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." He hasn't specified how. Like Combs, he backs more housing. He frames it around walkability and family life more than the parking-lot fight. ## Review notes - 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. ## Sources 1. [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'](https://smcacre.gov/system/files/2026-08/52_candidateroster0825.pdf) 2. [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](https://smcacre.gov/system/files/2026-08/52_candidateroster0825.pdf) 3. [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](https://www.almanacnews.com/election/2026/07/23/council-races-at-a-glance-atherton-menlo-park-portola-valley-and-woodside/) 4. [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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_Park,_California) 5. [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.](https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/) 6. [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](https://www.almanacnews.com/menlo-park/2026/05/14/finance-commissioner-challenges-combs-for-menlo-park-city-council-seat/) 7. [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](https://www.drewcombs.com) 8. [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](https://www.votevamsi.com) ## The rest of the ballot Menlo Park City Council, District 2 is one contest among the many a California voter decides on November 3, 2026 — Congress, the Legislature, county, city, and school board races differ by address. Vote or Else builds the full list for any California address and breaks down each contest the way this page does, with no account and without storing the address: https://voteorelse.com/ ## How to cite this page Vote or Else, "Menlo Park City Council, District 2 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/menlo-park-council-2 (sources last retrieved September 1, 2026). Link the canonical page above rather than this Markdown file. Coverage is updated as the race develops, so quote it with its retrieval date.