Photo of Seema PatelA 13-year San Mateo resident, Planning Commissioner, and mother, Seema Patel is running for the San Mateo City Council. She prioritizes housing affordability and cost of living, safe streets and parks, and sustainable infrastructure paired with fiscal responsibility. She is running because she wants all families to have the same opportunity her family had to make San Mateo their home, and to build a safe, vibrant city where anyone and everyone can thrive. 

In an interview with India Currents, Patel shared her perspective on her vision for the future of San Mateo. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why did you decide to run for office?

Like many people in the Bay Area, I am the daughter of immigrants who moved to this country seeking a better life for themselves and their future children. Thirteen years ago, my husband and I echoed that journey in our own way when we moved to the Bay Area to pursue great career opportunities. I am not a San Matean because of the lucky circumstance of my birth, but because of an intentional decision to make this city my home. My husband and I fell in love with San Mateo’s walkable neighborhoods, weather, and central location at the heart of the Peninsula, and decided this was where we wanted to plant our roots and have and raise a family. Ultimately, I’m running for City Council because I want all families to have the same opportunity we did to make San Mateo their home, to build a city where anyone and everyone can thrive.

What do you see as your primary role as a San Mateo Council member?

I see it as four interconnected responsibilities.

First, to help set a long-term vision for the City that improves the lives of as many people as possible and ensures our continuing economic and cultural success – not just react to whatever crisis is in front of us that week.

Second, to represent all of our constituents, not just the ones with the time and ability to show up to City Hall, while still standing firm on what is morally and ethically right, even when that is not the popular position in the room.

Third, to provide real oversight of the City Manager and City staff, ensuring fiscal discipline and operational success rather than simply rubber-stamping recommendations.

And finally, to represent San Mateo effectively in regional, state, and national bodies, and to the public – because so many of the decisions that affect our residents’ daily lives are made well beyond our own City Council chambers.

If elected, your top priorities will be…

My top three priorities are housing affordability and cost of living, safe streets and parks, and sustainable infrastructure paired with fiscal responsibility.

  • On housing, I will cut red tape and expand affordable housing while balancing growth, so working families and essential workers can actually afford to stay in the city they serve.
  • On safe streets, I will build on the work of Safe Streets for Everyone – which I founded after 3 pedestrians died in 5 months – to secure dedicated funding for quick-build safety improvements and protect vital community spaces like the B Street pedestrian mall, which I helped save from closure.
  • On infrastructure and spending, I will push for climate-resilient investments and eliminate wasteful spending before ever cutting core services or raising taxes.

What are the major challenges that your constituency is facing?

San Mateo faces a housing affordability crisis, aging and often dangerous street infrastructure, and a real structural budget deficit – but for our South Asian community specifically, there are additional pressures worth naming directly.

  • Housing pressure on multigenerational households: even with improved state ADU law, it remains difficult and expensive to build in-law units, and multigenerational family projects too often face disproportionate opposition, even though multigenerational living is common in South Asian families.
  • Small business survival: rising costs are making it harder for South Asian-owned small businesses to stay open, echoing challenges facing other immigrant communities across the city.
  • Everyday bias: I still hear public comments describing our downtown as becoming “too Asian,” or new housing dismissed as “stack and pack habitats for Indian software engineers.” These comments are rarely called out directly, and I think that needs to change.

What sets you apart from your competitors in the race?

It comes down to method and record, not personality. I do not wait for someone else to act – I founded Safe Streets for Everyone after people died on our streets rather than waiting for a report, and as a Planning Commissioner, I learned what our neighboring cities were doing and brought innovative ideas to the dais. I bring five years of hands-on land-use and housing policy experience, executive experience managing multi-million dollar budgets and teams at Google, and a genuine organizing background that goes back to helping lead the 2018 Google Walkout. That combination – technical depth, executive discipline, and organizing instinct – is what I bring to a Council that needs to move from talking about problems to actually solving them.

What would be your one-minute pitch to voters?

San Mateo needs a Councilmember who shows up, does the homework, and follows through. I have spent five years on the Planning Commission doing exactly that – fighting for affordable housing, safer streets, and fiscal responsibility, often when it was not easy or popular. I am an entrepreneur, a mom, and an organizer who does not wait for someone else to act. I’m running to build a safe and vibrant San Mateo where anyone and everyone can thrive. I would be honored to earn your vote this November.

Would you like to share a few details about your family and background?

I bring a deeply personal connection to the immigrant experience. My mother became a naturalized U.S. citizen just three months before I was born, and I carry real gratitude for that every day. I hold undergraduate degrees in Physics and Psychology from Harvey Mudd College, and graduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of South Florida. Before my twelve-year career at Google, I spent eight years as CEO of my own robotics company, building exhibits for children’s museums and therapy tools for neurodiverse children – work that taught me as much about compassion as it did about engineering.

Seema Patel with her family. (image source : Seema Patel)

My husband and I chose San Mateo as our home thirteen years ago, and our children were born and raised here. As a South Asian family, our home is filled with the traditions I grew up with — we celebrate Diwali and Holi with our local community, and I regularly connect with other South Asian parents here about raising South Asian and biracial children in the Bay Area, and about navigating culturally appropriate elder care for our own parents as they age. San Mateo’s diversity is part of why we chose to plant our roots here, and it is central to why I am running to serve it.

Are there any personal anecdotes you would like to share?

One moment that has stayed with me happened during a Planning Commission hearing for a mixed-race Black and Asian family in the Baywood neighborhood who wanted to build their dream home with an ADU for their grandma. The project drew fierce opposition from neighbors, even though similar projects nearby had not, and some commenters dismissed the ADU as a “scam.” On the dais, I explained that multigenerational households are common, if not the norm, in Asian families, and I talked about the history of racially restrictive covenants in that same neighborhood that had once excluded Black and Asian residents entirely. That stance drew real backlash, including efforts to remove me from the Planning Commission that continue today. But I do not regret it. It reminded me why representation matters – someone in that room needed to advocate for empathy and understanding, and I was glad it was me.

The post Desis On The Ballot: Seema Patel for San Mateo City Council (District 3) appeared first on India Currents.