 He received a business education, graduating from a commercial college, and worked as a wood and bark salesman.He served with the 3rd Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry Regiment from 1862–1866, mostly as a clerk in the District of the Frontier, Department of the Missouri, where he participated in Indian fighting in western Kansas.In the 1878 Assembly election for the sixth district of Milwaukee County (the sixth and thirteenth wards of the City of Milwaukee), Raesser defeated incumbent Assemblyman Henry Smith, who received only 253 votes as the Greenback Party nominee, to 488 for Democrat Alonzo H. Richards and 716 for Raesser.