# Portola Valley Town Council

Judith Hasko, Mary Hufty, and Craig Taylor are running uncontested for Portola Valley Town Council. Full ballot at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would hold one of three Town Council seats up this cycle. The seats are in Portola Valley. Portola Valley is a small town of roughly 4,300 residents. It sits in the hills west of Interstate 280. They vote on town laws, the budget, and land use. That includes the town's General Plan and Housing Element. The term is four years. Portola Valley elects its whole Town Council at-large. There are no council districts. The town's remaining council seats are not up for election this cycle. The council does not elect its Mayor or Vice Mayor directly. It chooses both from among its own members.

- Jurisdiction: City of Portola Valley
- Election: November 3, 2026 California general election
- Seats: 3
- Publisher: Vote or Else (https://voteorelse.com) — a free, nonpartisan ballot guide for California voters. No endorsements.
- Canonical page: https://voteorelse.com/2026/portola-valley-council
- 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: 82 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

- **Judith Hasko** — Town Council Member · Incumbent
- **Mary Hufty** — Portola Valley Vice Mayor · Incumbent
- **Craig Taylor** — Town Council Member · Incumbent

A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot.

Exactly three candidates qualified for Portola Valley's three Town Council seats this cycle, so nobody's vote can change the outcome. All three are the sitting Councilmembers seeking reelection unopposed: Vice Mayor Mary Hufty and Councilmembers Craig Taylor and Judith Hasko.

Each winner serves a 4-year term on Portola Valley's Town Council, deciding town ordinances, the budget, and land use -- including the town's General Plan and Housing Element -- for this roughly 4,300-resident town in the hills west of Interstate 280. Portola Valley elects its whole council at-large, with no districts, and the remaining Council seats aren't up this cycle. The Council doesn't elect its Mayor or Vice Mayor directly; it chooses both from among its own members each year.

The town is still holding this election, despite no challenger filing against any of the three incumbents, because a separate ballot measure -- Measure N, a town-charter/property-transfer-tax proposal -- also qualified for the same November ballot, and state law requires the Council race to proceed alongside it. With every seat effectively decided, the practical decision left to voters is narrower than usual: whether to mark all three names, some of them, or none -- a chance to register support or withhold it from sitting officeholders who face no rival.

## Mary Hufty

Mary Hufty is completing her first term on the council after her 2022 election, and is the town's current Vice Mayor. A 30-plus-year Portola Valley resident, Stanford graduate, and retired family physician (Palo Alto Medical Foundation, 1987-2018), she also founded and directed the Archbold Biological Station's fire-research program for 40 years, led the town's Trails & Paths Committee for over a decade (establishing the Blue Oaks Trail system), and founded Portola Valley Neighbors United, a fire-evacuation-focused resident group, in 2020.

**Strengths:** A first term spent building trust through regular office hours, plus decades of hands-on town work -- trails leadership and fire-evacuation organizing -- relevant to wildfire risk.

**Trade-offs:** She's unopposed for a second term, so voters get no rival platform to weigh her record against.

**Keep in mind:** Her platform is specific: finish the evacuation plan before next fire season, promote home hardening, and protect watersheds and wildlife corridors -- concrete enough to hold her to if reelected.

## Craig Taylor

Craig Taylor was elected to the council in 2022 after more than 20 years of town volunteer service, including chairing both the Planning Commission and the Emergency Preparedness Committee. A 40-plus-year town resident and retired tech executive, he's also an active field volunteer with the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit. He campaigns on "safety, civility, and accountability": wildfire and evacuation preparedness, transparent budgets and audits, and collaborative, respectful decision-making.

**Strengths:** Chaired both the Planning Commission and Emergency Preparedness Committee, plus field experience with the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit -- relevant to a hillside town's evacuation risk.

**Trade-offs:** He's unopposed for a second term, so voters get no rival platform to weigh his record against.

**Keep in mind:** One source labels him "Mayor," but that conflicts with more specific, dated reporting that Judith Hasko was appointed Mayor in 2025 -- this dataset treats "Mayor" as likely stale, not current fact.

## Judith Hasko

Judith Hasko was elected to the council in 2022 after 16 years of town volunteer service -- the Trails and Paths Committee, the Planning Commission, the Portola Road Corridor Plan Task Force, and the Ad Hoc Affordable Housing Committee among them -- and was appointed the town's Mayor in 2025. She's practiced as an attorney in the life sciences industry for 30 years. She campaigns on the town's financial health, public safety, and decisions that reflect Portola Valley's character as embodied in its General Plan.

**Strengths:** The longest run of pre-council town service of the three -- 16 years across four committees and task forces -- and, on the weight of the evidence, the town's current Mayor.

**Trade-offs:** She's unopposed for a second term, and has no current campaign site to check, per the Almanac's own reporting -- her platform rests on her candidate statement alone.

**Keep in mind:** Her three decades practicing life-sciences law inform her stated "practical and balanced solutions" framing, by her own account.

## Review notes

- Mary Hufty's own campaign site for Portola Valley Town Council: states her current role as 'Town Council Member (2023-present) and Vice Mayor (2026)'; a 34-year town resident, Stanford graduate, and retired family physician (Palo Alto Medical Foundation, 1987-2018); adds founding directorship of the Archbold Biological Station (40 years of fire research/management), founding Portola Valley Neighbors United (2020-2022, fire-evacuation focused), leading the town's Trails & Paths Committee (1995-2010, established the Blue Oaks Trail system), and a platform of mixed-price housing, fire safety/home hardening, conservation, and fiscal transparency; lists no FPPC filer ID and Craig Taylor's own campaign site for Portola Valley Town Council: over 20 years of town volunteer service across the Planning Commission (current member, former chair), Emergency Preparedness Committee (current member, former chair), and Open Space Acquisition Committee (current member, former chair), plus active field membership in the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit; campaigns on 'safety, civility, and accountability' -- wildfire/evacuation preparedness, collaborative decision-making, and transparent budgets/audits 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 the town's single at-large 'Town of Portola Valley Member, Town Council' contest, flagged 'On Ballot: Yes, Vote for 3,' and its exactly three qualified candidates in roster order -- Mary Hufty (qualified 7/22/2026, ballot designation 'Portola Valley Vice Mayor'), Craig S. Taylor (qualified 7/31/2026, 'Town Council Member'), and Judith A. Hasko (qualified 8/04/2026, 'Town Council Member')](https://smcacre.gov/system/files/2026-08/52_candidateroster0825.pdf)
2. [San Mateo County ACRE -- this dataset's own transcribed summary of the same certified county roster's contest headers, confirming exactly one Portola Valley race is on the November ballot (Town Council, at-large, no districts, no separate Mayor race) 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 stating directly that 'three seats on the Portola Valley Town Council currently held by Craig Taylor, Judith Hasko and Mary Hufty are up for reelection,' that two of the three had confirmed running for reelection as of publication while the third had not yet responded, and quoting Hufty's own campaign statement on her vision for the town](https://www.almanacnews.com/election/2026/07/23/council-races-at-a-glance-atherton-menlo-park-portola-valley-and-woodside/)
4. [The Almanac (Jennifer Yoshikoshi) -- "Portola Valley will hold election, even though Town Council race is uncontested" (Aug. 25, 2026): staff-bylined reporting confirming no challenger filed against any of the three incumbents by the Oct. 20, 2026 write-in deadline; explains the town is still holding the election because Measure N (a town-charter/real-property-transfer-tax ballot measure) separately qualified for the same ballot and, per Town Manager Darcy Smith, state law requires the council race to proceed alongside any qualified town measure; and gives individual, candidate-statement-sourced profiles of all three candidates -- Taylor's 40+-year residency, retired-tech-executive background, 2022 election, and prior Planning Commission/Emergency Preparedness Committee service; Hufty's 30+-year residency, retired family-physician background, Stanford degree, and first term after her 2022 election; and Hasko's 16 years of pre-2022 town volunteer service (Trails and Paths Committee, Planning Commission, the Portola Road Corridor Plan Task Force, the Ad Hoc Affordable Housing Committee), her 30-year life-sciences legal career, and the article's own statement that she 'was elected onto the council in 2022 and was appointed mayor in 2025.' Measure N itself is not built as a contest in this dataset, per this dataset's ballot-measures-descoped-from-display policy](https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2026/08/25/portola-valley-will-hold-election-even-though-town-council-race-is-uncontested/)
5. [Wikipedia's Portola Valley, California article -- states the Town Council is 'made up of volunteers elected for four year terms' and that it 'appoints a town manager and other necessary officers and also elects a mayor and vice-mayor from the council members,' i.e. no directly elected Mayor. Used narrowly for this non-volatile structural claim only -- its undated infobox naming Judith Hasko Mayor and Craig Taylor Vice Mayor conflicts with other, more specifically dated sources on who currently holds each title (see the shard's own discrepancy note) and is not relied on for that claim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portola_Valley,_California)
6. [Craig Taylor's own campaign site for Portola Valley Town Council: over 20 years of town volunteer service across the Planning Commission (current member, former chair), Emergency Preparedness Committee (current member, former chair), and Open Space Acquisition Committee (current member, former chair), plus active field membership in the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit; campaigns on 'safety, civility, and accountability' -- wildfire/evacuation preparedness, collaborative decision-making, and transparent budgets/audits](https://craigtaylorforpv2026.com)
7. [Mary Hufty's own campaign site for Portola Valley Town Council: states her current role as 'Town Council Member (2023-present) and Vice Mayor (2026)'; a 34-year town resident, Stanford graduate, and retired family physician (Palo Alto Medical Foundation, 1987-2018); adds founding directorship of the Archbold Biological Station (40 years of fire research/management), founding Portola Valley Neighbors United (2020-2022, fire-evacuation focused), leading the town's Trails & Paths Committee (1995-2010, established the Blue Oaks Trail system), and a platform of mixed-price housing, fire safety/home hardening, conservation, and fiscal transparency; lists no FPPC filer ID](https://maryforcouncil.org)
8. [This dataset's own documented record of an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve campaign-finance filings for all three Portola Valley Town Council candidates: a guessed San Mateo County NetFile-style local agency id ('PVL') returned only a generic, contentless 'Public Portal' shell -- inconclusive as to whether that id is even correct -- and a parallel Cal-Access filer-list query returned no rendered content, the same client-side-rendering failure mode documented elsewhere in this dataset. Documents the absence of a reachable financial-disclosure source for these three candidates, not any of their actual finances](https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Candidates/)

## The rest of the ballot

Portola Valley Town Council 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, "Portola Valley Town Council — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/portola-valley-council (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.