Jeremy Gragert to Run for Eau Claire City Council President

Jeremy Gragert, a former Eau Claire City Council member and community advocate, has officially launched his campaign for Council President.

Gragert announced his decision to run for the seat on Thursday. The announcement came just a few days after current Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge announced she would not seek reelection in order to focus on her campaign for Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District.

Gragert represented District 3 on the city council from 2018 to 2024, and has since worked with a number of community organizations like Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Friends of the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, and Clean Wisconsin.

“I think we’re in a very important moment for our city and really our country right now,” Gragert said on his decision to run for the position. “So I feel like it’s an important time for me to step up and I feel like taking another leadership opportunity to be able to help the City of Eau Claire kind of move through uncertain times. And you know when we have budget challenges, we want to make sure that, you know, everybody has a seat at the table to figure out how to prioritize, how to, you know, have ambitions for our community. And at the same time, just being realistic about how we are making sure it’s an affordable community and that the services we provide are very efficient and sustainable.”

Gragert also highlighted the importance of the next Eau Claire City Council President having both prior legislative experience and experience advocating for change at the state level.

“Advocating and working with our legislators, and working with whoever the Governor is at any given moment to like make sure that our city and other cities across the state have the resources that they need and that they don’t have to do things that make life less affordable for people just to be able to fund basic services,” he said. “The state really needs to share more revenue that is essentially being extracted from our cities and not coming back to us.”

The race for Eau Claire City Council President will be on the Spring Election ballot, which will take place on April 7th.