Background & Experience

I’m Ethan Clevenger, and I’m running to be your Ward 1 councilor for the City of Eugene.

I grew up in a rural Illinois town of about 40,000 people on the Mississippi. I graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa in 2014 with a degree in computer science and a minor in music, plus two years already under my belt at a small web design and marketing agency.

In 2016, my college girlfriend and I reunited and made the move out to Eugene, Oregon, where she was taking a job as a Register-Guard reporter and I was starting my own web development company, Sterner Stuff.

Fast-forward to today and a few things have changed.

• I opened a men’s clothing store, Porterhouse Clothing & Supply, in Downtown Eugene in 2020.
• Lillie is now the store manager at Run Hub Northwest.
• Lillie and I got married in 2022.
• We moved into a 100-year-old arts-and-crafts fixer in Jefferson Westside in December 2023 so that we could walk and bike to work and have the space to someday raise a family.

And now, I’m running to represent you and Ward 1 on Eugene’s city council. If you happen to see us on the street walking our dog, Remus, don’t hesitate to say hi!

Leadership & Political Experience

Current:

• President of Downtown Eugene Merchants, FY ’24-’25
• Board member of the Local Government Affairs Council at the Eugene Chamber of Commerce since 2023

Previous:

• 2024 candidate for Eugene City Council, Ward 1
• Together with Tai Pruce-Zimmerman, Lin Woodrich, and a collection of other passionate community members, reactivated the previously inactive Active Bethel Community (at that time, Active Bethel Citizens, or ABC) neighborhood association in 2018
• Subsequently served on the ABC board in various capacities, including co-chair and member-at-large, from 2018-2022
• In 2020, I served as president of the Emerald Valley Professionals chapter of Oregon Networking Exchange, a local, membership-based business networking group, leading our chapter through the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Door knocked in support of a St. Vincent de Paul home for homeless boys in Bethel
• Polk County Iowa delegate for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary