The Vote No campaign's lawyers also do financing work for a company bidding to build on the very downtown sites the campaign is trying to keep in play.
A pledge form circulating for Menlo Park Neighbors and Small Business Owners for Affordable Homes — the organization opposing the Downtown Parking Plazas Ordinance, sponsored by Housing Leadership Action of San Mateo County — carries the letterhead of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, out of the firm's Sacramento office.[1]
That alone isn't unusual. Greenberg Traurig is one of the largest law firms in the country, and ballot campaign committees often hire experienced compliance counsel.
But a twist in the relationship is this: Greenberg Traurig also represents Related California — one of the three developers that responded to the city's RFP for the downtown parking plazas — and not in some abstract, industry-wide sense. The firm's own website credits its real estate practice with "securing a $350 million permanent loan for Tasman East Apartments, a residential development project in Santa Clara, Calif." for Related California, as part of the deals it closed in 2025.[2] That's a real, dated, sourced client relationship, not an inference.
One thing worth stating plainly, though: MPN's own campaign finance filings do not show the committee paying Greenberg Traurig anything. The committee's most recent quarterly statement, covering Jan. 1 through March 31, 2026, itemizes $42,964.33 in total spending across six payees — Deane & Company, EMC Research, Team CivX, and, through EMC Research's own sub-payments, KGS Research and Political Data — and Greenberg Traurig appears in none of it.[3] No semi-annual statement covering the following quarter had been filed as of this writing, so this is the most current disclosure on record. Whatever role Greenberg Traurig is playing, it isn't currently showing up as a paid line item in this committee's own books.
Lay the two facts next to each other and one likely consequence is plain. If the ballot measure fails, the city's plan to redevelop the downtown plazas — including a possible award to Related California — can proceed without the citywide vote the measure would otherwise require. So the law firm whose letterhead appears on the Vote No campaign's own pledge materials is also one of the go-to firms for a builder seeking to develop the affected sites, having recently handled Related California's financing work just down the road from Menlo Park.
This connection isn't obvious, but it isn't hidden either — both relationships are matters of public record. It's the overlap that's worth considering.
Likely not. Big law firms represent multiple players within an industry, and a firm the size of Greenberg Traurig — with offices across the country and abroad — often has clients on more than one side of almost anything. That's just what it means to be a firm that size. The lawyers doing the work for one client may not even know about another client whose interests could be affected by the outcome of a project or a case.
Conflict-of-interest rules typically concern direct and material adversity: situations where a firm's duty to one client would compromise its duty to another — the same lawyer, or the same team, pulled in two directions on the same matter; one client suing another; or confidential knowledge gained for one client that could advantage or disadvantage the other. To avoid exactly that, law firms routinely secure advance client consent waiving conflicts where the rules permit it.
So this piece isn't accusing anyone of an ethics violation, and readers shouldn't take it as one.
It points to something plainer and, in a way, more interesting: a law firm doesn't need to break a rule to end up structurally positioned so that more than one of its clients wants — and could benefit from — the same result.
Related California wants the parking-plaza project to stay available without a citywide vote standing in the way. So does the Menlo Park Vote No campaign whose pledge materials carry Greenberg Traurig's letterhead.
That alignment didn't need advance planning to occur or to produce a mutually desired result.
It's still a fact a voter might want before deciding how much weight to put on either side's messaging — sometimes the people making the case have something in common beyond their position: who they pay for legal advice, who's advising them, and who helps them raise money.