Tai Pruce-Zimmerman, Ward 6 Eugene City Council candidate, says that two years ago Greg Evans, his opponent and longtime friend, gave him a call. He said “Tai, are you ready? I’m not running again. It’s your turn.” After Pruce-Zimmerman filed to run, he says he went to Evans with his petition. 

“I wanted signature number one to be my wife, and signature number two to be him,” Pruce-Zimmerman recalled, gold Star Trek cufflinks peeking from his sleeves. “Those were my top two endorsers, I thought.” 

After a pause, Evans said “Let’s hold off on that, I’m thinking about something.” Three weeks later, according to Pruce-Zimmerman, Evans told him that he decided to run for a fourth term. 

So Pruce-Zimmerman suspended his campaign in October 2025. “Running against him had never been the point,” he said. But, he says, “person after person said, ‘You know you can still run, right?’”

Eugene Weekly reached out to Evans repeatedly via phone and email for comment but received no response. 

Pruce-Zimmerman reactivated his campaign for Ward Six. Since then, he has been endorsed by other Eugene City Council members, Bethel School Board members and the Oregon Democratic Party, which also endorsed Evans. 

Pruce-Zimmerman says it’s his union endorsements, however, that he is most proud of — especially the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees local 1724, which he was a past member of.

Ward Six covers the Bethel neighborhood in northwest Eugene. Pruce-Zimmerman was born and raised in Eugene, and has lived in Bethel since 2015, when he and his wife picked it as their place to settle down. Now they have a kindergartner.  He says it has been overlooked for far too long, and is a proponent of its potential.

“​​There’s a reason that, when we were trying to decide where we were going to settle down and raise a family, we said, ‘Well, Eugene, right,’” he says From there, he “just dove into community service.”

Now, he has been on the City of Eugene Budget Committee — which he has also chaired — for seven years, has been on the Bethel School District Long Range Planning Committee for three years, and helped reactivate the Active Bethel Community (ABC), which he has chaired for seven years. 

As a city councilor, Pruce-Zimmerman says the city’s budget crisis would be his main focus. Currently, he works as a statistician for Chess.com, but he has a professional background in accounting. This, he said, makes him a “useful voice” in local politics and in his volunteer roles.

“At the council level, we need to figure out our priorities,” he said. “There hasn’t been a big community conversation where we really, actually figure out how important each piece is to everyone. There’s no easy cuts.”

As for his own priorities, when it comes to the budget he says that everything, including the police budget, is on the table, except fire and EMS. He sees Eugene’s public services like parks and libraries as critical to the city’s economic development, however. “There’s a reason we’re all here,” he said — the jobs Eugene can provide won’t have any value if people don’t actually want to live in Eugene. 

The housing and homelessness crisis is important to him as well. These issues are one and the same: people are getting priced out of their homes, and the city should be “pulling every lever” to fix that, he said. On this, he said he would be willing to look at loosening some permitting restrictions as a possible solution. 

A potential revenue source to alleviate some of the city’s financial woes, the controversial Highway 99 Amazon Warehouse, would also provide jobs to Ward Six. Evans voiced his support for the project in a November 2025 Eugene Weekly article.

“I do know from conversations in Ward Six that the vast majority of people seem to be in favor of it. That matters to me,” Pruce-Zimmerman said. “I don’t like Amazon as a company. It’s hard for me to say that I support it, per se, but I don’t oppose it.”

Despite the imperfect start to his campaign, Pruce-Zimmerman thinks he has the right stuff to pull off his vision for the city and for Bethel. 

“I don’t think it’s enough to just talk about what Bethel needs,” he said. “I think it takes some work that I am willing to do, and that I think I’m particularly able to do, to really move the needle on more city investment out there.”

So far, according to Oregon Secretary of State campaign finance records, Pruce-Zimmerman has raised $8,451.24, mostly from small individual donations, his largest donors are Dave Kjeldgaard, a retiree, and his father, Kenneth Zimmerman, who have each contributed $1,000 to his campaign. 

Evans has raised approximately $54,912.36. His largest donors include $32,695.50 from LIFT Lane County, the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce PAC, $2,500 from Wildish Sand and Gravel Co., $1,500 from California logging company Sierra Pacific Industries and $1,000 from Ed King, owner of King Estate Winery.