Eric Papenfuse

Papenfuse started the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in 2000 because he wanted a gathering place in Harrisburg "where people could talk about books, where they could have intellectually engaged ideas about all sorts of issues of the day"[7] and "to listen to music, to drink coffee, to congregate."[8] He envisioned his bookstore from the beginning as a Town Hall for the community.[8]

The bookstore houses some 200,000 new, used and rare books as well as a warehouse full of over 2,000,000 books which are sold online. The Midtown Scholar is considered one of America's largest academic used bookstores and it is considered the driving force for the cultural revitalization of Harrisburg's Midtown.[1] The New York Times book critic Dwight Garner described the bookstore as an "essentially religious experience. Vaut le voyage, as the Michelin guides like to say."[9]

The Midtown Scholar has a coffee shop and a bakery run by P&R famous for their southern sweet potato pies.[10] They host music concerts, author talks, book clubs and poetry readings. In the last year, the Midtown Scholar hosted the acclaimed author Salman Rushdie who presented his new novel The Golden House;[11] Mark Bowden, the author of Hue 1968;[12] Masha Gessen, a Russian-American journalist and critic of Putin;[13] and Patricia Lockwood, whose poems have appeared in the London Review of Books and the New Yorker magazine.[14]

Papenfuse served briefly starting in January 2007 on Harrisburg's Authority board[15] (now known as Capital Region Water) which had overseen Harrisburg's botched incinerator and had led the city to near bankruptcy with more than $300 million in debt.[16] He resigned in November 2007 after a YouTube video showed him bringing up a mock Christmas gift list of strangely titled books for city officials.[17]

After two unsuccessful Democratic primary bids in 2009 for a seat on the Harrisburg City Council and in 2011 for Dauphin County Commissioner,[18] Papenfuse reentered politics in January 2013 with his announcement that he would run for Mayor of Harrisburg. He won the 2013 Mayoral Election which began his political career and in 2017 won a second term as mayor. Prior to his career as a bookstore owner and a mayor, he was a teacher of Latin for Central Dauphin East High School and Linglestown Junior High School.[8]

Papenfuse won a contested Democratic primary election in May 2013 by beating incumbent mayor Linda Thompson as well as Dan Miller and Lewis Butts.[19] After losing to him in the primaries, Dan Miller switched parties and ran against Papenfuse in the general election as the Republican candidate .[20] Papenfuse defeated him and several write-in candidates to win the mayor's seat on November 5, 2013. There were an unusual amount of write-in votes for mayor, accounting for about 17% of the final vote.[21] Papenfuse assumed office on January 6, 2014.

Papenfuse won a contested Democratic Primary in the run-up to the Mayoral Election on May 17, 2017, with 48.5% of the votes. Gloria Martin-Roberts won 38.2% of the primary vote.[22] The vote between Papenfuse and Martin-Roberts was split evenly between Harrisburg's West side which favored Papenfuse to Harrisburg's East side which favored Martin-Roberts. On November 7, 2017, Papenfuse won a second, 4-year term as Mayor by a large margin with two of his opponents in the Democratic Primaries, Martin-Roberts and Lewis Butts, running as write-in candidates against him.

In the second year of his tenure as Mayor, Papenfuse initiated a Comprehensive Plan for the City of Harrisburg. The Plan was launched in 2015 and sought to encourage preservation of historic buildings, strengthen neighborhoods and the environment by promoting growth through improving the quality of life.[23] The $200,000 Plan was to be completed in the Spring of 2016, but issues with the hired consultant, Bret Peters, of the Office of Planning and Architecture, lead to the City terminating the contract.[24]

In 2016, The Patriot-News reported on two stories that dealt with Mayor Papenfuse. The first concerned that he owned 8 properties near the Third Street Cafe bar in which he had declared a business nuisance [25] and sought its closure and the second is the uncovering of his avoidance of paying overtime for his employees for several years by the Department of Labor.[26] On June 13, 2016, the same day that Donald Trump revoked the Washington Post's press credentials,[27] Papenfuse issued a ban for the Patriot-News and directed his spokeswoman to no longer answer questions from the Patriot-News reporters and claimed that the reason was because of the Patriot-News being more like "Gawker ... not the equivalent of the Washington Post"[28] yet journalists responded by saying it was in response to two news stories that delved into his business holdings and practices.[29] Papenfuse's media censorship was featured by the Committee to Protect Journalists in Attacks on the Press: The New Face of Censorship.[30]