On Nov. 3, residents in San Mateo and Foster City not only voted in the upcoming midterms, but also for candidates running for their respective city councils.
In the city of San Mateo, seven candidates ran for three open seats representing districts 1, 3 and 5.
DISTRICT 1
In District 1, covering northwest regions of the city including the Baywood-Aragon area, incumbent Councilmember Lisa Diaz Nash faced off against Taso Zografos.
Nash, a long-term San Mateo resident, began her career in consumer marketing before shifting to local government.
“[It was] a wonderful chance to have a perspective of the basic consumer promise,” Nash said. “That’s the same in local government … [it’s] a service business … our whole job is to understand our constituents and what their needs and priorities are, and advocate for them to accomplish those barriers.”
Nash’s priorities for her campaign included public safety, affordable workforce housing, addressing the city’s $15 million budget deficit and increasing community engagement.
As councilmember, she has worked on expanding affordable housing through projects and also intends to address the budget deficit with Measure H, which would institute an additional quarter-cent sales tax, and by temporarily freezing several open positions and projects.
Although Nash first ran for city council in 2020, she was first elected in 2022, and ran for reelection this November.
“I learned the first [and] second time around how important it is to just get out and knock doors,” Nash said. “You can have all the fancy social media you want and do all the big events, but at the end of the day, people’s decisions are made when they understand who you are, whether you agree with them and whether you’re going to stand up for them.”
Running in opposition to Nash is Taso Zografos, who has been involved in implementing transportation, parking and infrastructure solutions through his professional career at Lockheed Martin, an aerospace and defense contractor. Zografos serves as the company’s Customer Success Executive.
His priorities include safe neighborhoods by prioritizing public safety and emergency services, smarter transportation and infrastructure policies, affordable housing and fiscal oversight and accountability at City Hall. Notably, he opposes Measure H.
“There is more than one way for a city to bring in money,” Zografos said on his campaign website. “I would focus on expanding the City’s economic base — retaining the businesses we already have, filling the commercial vacancies sitting empty along our corridors and actively attracting new employers and businesses our community actually wants.”
As of the time of publishing, Diaz Nash led Zografos with 61.8% of the vote.
DISTRICT 3
In District 3, the region nestled between El Camino Real and the Bayshore Freeway, incumbent Council Member Robert Newsom Jr. and San Mateo Planning Commission member Seema Patel faced off to represent the seat.
San Mateo native Newsom’s priorities include pedestrian and school safety, affordable housing and continuing to update public safety and community facilities across the city.
In 2024, Newsom worked with the San Mateo Police Department to launch the Real-Time Information Center, which has played a significant role in crime reduction, real-time mapping and surveillance and the use of automated license plate readers through integrated databases, such as Flock, to provide information to officers and first responders. He is also working to update Fire Station #27, the oldest in San Mateo, creating RV Homeless Outreach to get people without homes into shelters and funding programs to prevent housing loss for families with financial challenges.
Running in opposition is Seema Patel, who has worked in city government since 2021, as part of the Community Relations, Civic Arts and Planning Commissions.
“[Up] until six years ago, I would focus all my advocacy at the state and national level, and … I would rant on social media about some crazy thing happening at the national level,” Patel said. “[A friend] would [say], ‘Seema, 95% of what you experience in your daily life is controlled by your city. [The] best thing that you can do is get involved at the local level [and] have the maximum amount of impact on people’s daily lives’ … [And] I finally [decided to] apply for a commission.”
A major priority for Patel has been bike and pedestrian safety; she hopes to introduce more proactive approaches in implementing safety improvement projects.
“[The] way that [the projects are] prioritized usually is … [through] how many collisions have been there, how many people have been injured [or] killed,” Patel said. “I would love to figure out a metric that’s based around other factors rather than injuries or deaths, like vehicle volume or speed or [street] design.”
Patel’s other priorities include affordable housing, specifically by eliminating bureaucracy and introducing policies balancing the ratio of office to housing space, bringing new jobs to support residents and investing in transitions to clean energy.
At the time of publishing, Patel led the race, garnering 62.3% of the vote
FOSTER CITY DISTRICT 1
In District 1, which spans the central part of Foster City, Mayor Art Kiesel and Councilmember Phoebe Shin-Venkat ran against each other for the seat.
A resident of Foster City for over three decades, Kiesel has served on the city’s Planning Commission and for two terms on City Council.
His priorities include responsible housing and managed growth while taking Foster City’s limited area and traffic conditions into account, fiscal responsibility, responsive public safety services, improving park and recreation facilities and expanding climate-resilient infrastructure, like the Foster City Levee Improvements Project, which reinforced the shoreline embankment to protect the city against floods.
Senior Emily Ma views the improved levee as a successful step toward sustainability.
“[If] we hadn’t had that project, I would probably be significantly more concerned about the future of Foster City and what it would look like in 30 years in 2050, when climate change and its associated impacts have been further exacerbated,” Ma said.
Councilmember Phoebe Shin-Venkat, first elected in 2024, was the first renter and Chinese woman to serve on the City Council. She previously served on the Planning Commission, and now serves as a board member for Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse and a founding executive member of the San Mateo County Asian American Pacific Islander Alliance.
Her priorities as councilmember include fiscal safety, maintaining public safety, attracting and retaining businesses, sustainability, affordable housing and supporting organizations that bring multiple generations together.
“She definitely takes in [others’ views] and adds her own little twist,” said Rhia Kulkarni, a member of the Foster City Youth Advisory Council. “[She] overall is a very nice, cooperative and engaged person.”
At the time of publishing, Kiesel was ahead of Shin-Venkat, taking 65.1% of the vote.
Since San Mateo and Foster City employ staggered elections, the candidates seeking to represent the remaining districts in both cities will run for election in 2028.
