Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge Won’t Seek New Term

Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge announced Monday she will not seek a new term, shifting her focus to her Congressional campaign.

Berge was first elected to the City Council in 2018, and was later elected to serve as City Council President in 2023. She says she made the decision to not seek another term to both avoid a situation where she needs to leave the position just months into the new term and to give other local officials a chance to lead.

“To be honest it didn’t really seem fair to run again,” she said. “And then, hopefully I’ll be successful in August and November, and then having to leave, you know, only a few months into my term. I’ve had eight years on council and that’s a long time to serve in local government. And so it’s good also to give other people a chance at leadership, whether it be on the Council or Council President as well.”

Looking back at her time as President, Berge highlighted efforts to address issues like housing, healthcare, and PFAS contamination in Eau Claire as some of the City Council’s biggest accomplishments. She also noted that addressing those issues for good requires collaboration between officials at the local, state, and federal government level.

“One of the reasons why I’m running for Congress is for healthcare, to solve that issue too,” she said. “But at the local level, I think to solve these problems, these really complicated problems, housing, healthcare, affordability, you need people working at the local, state and federal government actually trying to solve problems.”

Berge joined Mornings with Pat Kreitlow on Monday to share the announcement, and said she’s been encouraged by the energy voters in Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District are showing.

“People are fired up this year,” she said. “As I’m traveling through the 19 counties in red districts, red counties, like there are full houses and people are protesting every week. They have plans to keep going all year, all winter long. Again, we haven’t seen that, I haven’t seen that energy since 2016.”

Berge will face off against Rebecca Cooke for the Democratic nomination in the August primary election. The winner will run against two-term incumbent Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden in November. Cooke won the nomination in the 2024 election, but fell short against Congressman Van Orden in the general election.