Running for office a family affair for Richard Staub

Janet Staub looked at her husband, Richard, Thursday and had one thing to say.

"He never sits still," she said. "I don't know how he does it, but I know he thrives on stress."

When Staub decided in May to run for Ward 4 supervisor, Janet had a flash of the couple's busy life with two young children, and her first reaction was to tell him no.

"He called me 50 minutes before filing closed," she said. "With two working parents, it's hard. But I said, 'Richard, if you think you can make a difference, go ahead.' Ten minutes later, I got a call from the clerk's office saying, 'Do you know what your husband's doing?'"

Staub, 48, knew what he was doing. He was hoping to make a difference in the community that's been his home since 1960. Since then, he finished first in the primary election and has turned campaigning into a family affair.

"Let me tell you, I sure know how to hang a sign," said Staub's son Sam, 10. "We've put signs up all over town. We go to a lot of different places."

Staub, an attorney and developer, describes himself as a "man of distractions."

"I practice law, but I pepper it with different things," he said. "I've never set a goal I haven't accomplished. I do it right or I don't even do it. I ran for this job thinking I can do it and make a difference. I'm not going to make this my life's career. I think people may want someone on the board who has a history here."

Staub's parents, Harold and Marlene, moved their family to Carson City in 1960 from Modesto, Calif.

"My dad had a good job in Modesto, but he wanted to be an entrepreneur," Staub said. "My parents took a ride, came up Highway 395, saw a hamlet called Carson City and they never left."

His parents opened an A&W drive-through restaurant at Carson and Tenth streets. Staub said he, his brother and sister worked alongside their parents to make the business work.

"We were raised in that business," Staub said. "We never got to play basketball or football because we worked. Dad fired us every other day, and mom sent us back to work. But he taught us the value of money and the cost of buying things."

He learned the value of money so well, he saved enough to buy a 1968 Camaro when he was 16, and "he's had 100 cars since," Janet said. Tinkering with and selling cars has become one of Staub's favorite pasttimes, although newer cars with their electronic parts are ruining his ability to tear through cars with wrenches, he said.

"His parents say they should have put him through school to work on cars," Janet joked.

"That little A&W put all three kids through school," Staub added. "It taught me that I never wanted to run an A&W, and that if I stayed in school long enough, I would never have to flip a burger again."

Staub graduated from Carson High School at a time when "kids made two choices. They either went to school or went to war."

He chose school, and went to the University of Nevada, Reno where he started out thinking he wanted to be a dentist.

"I did chemistry and biology, and I had no interest in learning about frogs and why they croaked," he said.

He moved to public administration, improved his grades and decided to go to law school. He was accepted at the Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Wash., and after graduating with a law degree and a master's degree in commerce, he decided to return to Carson City.

"I was raised here. We have 300 days of sunlight, and there it was the opposite," Staub said. "When you grow up in a place, you learn to love it. I came home for the weather and my family."

He has since dabbled in development, taught law at Western Nevada and Truckee Meadow community colleges, and he and his brother, John, developed the Copper Pointe Plaza office complex on the former site of the family A&W.

Staub met his wife 13 years ago when the couple shared an office building. Janet, a State Farm Insurance agent, said they really hit it off after he served as her divorce attorney, but that he really married her because he felt sorry for her.

"I did," Staub joked. "She lived by herself. She had two weiner dogs, and one was dying. She ate eggs for dinner every night. I'd lived by myself for a number of years, and I started to like it. I thought to myself, if you don't change now, you never will."

The couple married 11 years ago and have two children, Sam and Sadie, 7. They live in an east Carson City home that Staub designed and helped build. There are about 600 quail in the back yard that Janet says she tries to feed and her husband tries, using his hunting skills, to trap. She's a little worried about how Staub potentially being elected as a supervisor will work with an already hectic life, but said, "Rich can do anything."

"Richard is very self-assured and very confident," she said. "A client called me and said, 'Janet, if you don't want me to vote for him, tell me. You're the one who'll have to deal with it.' I told her to vote for him. I'm totally behind him. I think he truly will make a difference."

Staub said he was humbled by winning the primary election, but is a little nervous about the general election.

"Deep down I feel I'm going to win, but I felt that deep down at 4:10 p.m. on May 15," he said. "All my clients want to go to court and win, and I always caution one thing. I tell them if you're willing to win, you have to be wiling to lose."