Eric Robert Papenfuse (born September 4, 1971) is an American businessman and politician who served as the 38th Mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

[5][6] At Yale, he wrote the book, The Evils of Necessity: Robert Goodloe Harper and the Moral Dilemma of Slavery, which was published by the American Philosophical Society in 1997.

[3] 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.

[17] 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.

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.

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.

Binda asserted that the mayor should have "been more attentive to building and maintaining relationships," citing his feuds with City Council—among others—as his biggest downfall, despite attending council meetings (which both predecessors deemed beneath them).

[32] Papenfuse won a contested Democratic primary election in May 2013 by beating incumbent mayor Linda Thompson as well as Dan Miller and Lewis Butts.

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.

They found a large Victorian house on Front Street in Harrisburg's Shipoke neighborhood near the site of Harris' Ferry, the "most historic crossing place on the Susquehanna.

Their Endowment Fund supports "provocative books on the aesthetics, politics, history and sociocultural implications of cinema and other forms of mass media.