Palo Alto City Council

Vicki Veenker is the sitting Mayor, chosen by her Council colleagues for 2026 after serving as Vice Mayor in 2025. She was first elected to Council in 2022, after an unsuccessful 2016 run for state Assembly against Marc Berman (54-46). She spent 30 years as a patent attorney before shifting to mediation over the past decade, including work bringing together disagreeing health-policy leaders in Sacramento on rising healthcare costs. Her 2022 platform included downtown renovation, phasing out natural gas with voter input on the timeline, waiving the city's 50-foot height limit for appropriate housing projects to meet state quotas, pursuing city-owned fiber internet, and supporting a homeless shelter near the Baylands. Her campaign treasurer for this run is Hsinya Shen, a Public Art Commission member, with her husband Tim Crockett as assistant treasurer; as of mid-July 2026 she had declined interview requests until officially on the ballot.

Ed Lauing is a 34-year Palo Alto resident and executive recruiter first elected to Council in 2020 after finishing fifth in a ten-way race for four seats; he served as Vice Mayor in 2024 and Mayor in 2025. Before Council he chaired the Planning and Transportation Commission and had earlier served on the Parks and Recreation Commission, and he co-chaired a citizen group that worked on the city's Housing Element. His 2022 platform favored negotiating with individual developers for complete neighborhoods (parks, roads, shopping, bike routes) over broader upzoning, supported a new 88-unit homeless shelter while cautioning against overoptimism about its success rate, and prioritized upgrading the electrical grid over city fiber. He voted against Castilleja School's expansion permit over Embarcadero Road traffic concerns.

Bryna Chang is a Planning and Transportation Commissioner, appointed to that commission in a 4-2-1 Council vote in March 2021. She previously lectured at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, teaching "Innovation and Problem Solving" and "Critical Analytical Thinking" courses, and ran the school's MBA Program Office; she also has a background in internet product management and management consulting. She grew up in Palo Alto public schools (Nixon Elementary, JLS Middle, Gunn High) and has served on school-site councils at Gunn (since 2020), JLS, and Hoover. At her 2021 commission appointment she said she wanted to help revitalize the North Ventura area near El Camino Real, calling it a chance to "improve the quality of life for families currently living in the area, and make a small dent in the housing shortage." Her mid-2026 campaign raised $17,109 from 28 donations, 26 of them from Palo Alto residents, and she is endorsed by Councilmen Pat Burt and Keith Reckdahl, former Mayor Lydia Kou, and school board member Shana Segal.

Yudy Deng is a Parks and Recreation Commissioner; no occupation outside that role was stated in any article located for this pass. Her mid-2026 campaign reported the largest fundraising total of the race, $82,307 from 39 donations, though only 15 of those donations came from Palo Alto residents. Reported contributions include $5,900 from the Asian American Civic Leadership Committee and $2,000 from California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, plus contributions at the maximum allowed amount from several business and restaurant owners. She is endorsed by Councilman George Lu, former Mayor Judy Kleinberg, and Santa Clara County Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga.

Gary Gechlik is a physician at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose. As of the Daily Post's Aug. 7, 2026 report he had not yet completed his candidacy paperwork, with a planned filing date of Friday, Aug. 8. He described his campaign in simple terms: "It is the simple idea that municipal service is intended to be helpful and non controversial," summarizing his platform as "be good to other people."

Brian Hamachek is a software engineer who grew up in Palo Alto and applied unsuccessfully three times for the Planning and Transportation Commission before his first Council run, in 2022. That year he opposed eliminating natural gas from homes and a proposal to let people sleep in vehicles at church parking lots, was critical of then-City Manager Ed Shikada as pursuing "his own priorities rather than what council members or residents want," opposed police dog use even for searches, and set up a public archive of Palo Alto police radio transmissions on Broadcastify for officer accountability. He proposed closing California and University Avenues to car traffic to support struggling downtown businesses, favored a business tax and a city fiber-internet project, and was reluctant about waiving the city's 50-foot height limit while acknowledging state housing law might require it.

Raymond Lee Goins is identified in Daily Post election coverage only as "activist." The one confirmed public role located for him in this pass: a member of the NAACP San Jose/Silicon Valley branch, he led that branch's February 2025 push, alongside the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, to have Santa Clara County remove a 1961 mural depicting Native Americans from the Palo Alto Courthouse, saying "This mural is dehumanizing to all who walk the halls, especially those whose ancestors have been depicted in such a dehumanizing fashion."