One day several months ago, Leslie Reberg was downstairs working on the family computer when she heard her husband, Mike, who was upstairs with their 8-year-old daughter, start into a stern lecture.
Not wanting to interfere while her husband was doing his parenting duty, Leslie stayed downstairs, even when the lecture got very severe - and very long."What did Katie do?" she wondered to herself.
Finally, Leslie decided she needed to insert herself into the situation. She came upstairs and there was Mike, standing in the living room speaking in a strong voice and vigorously gesticulating while Katie sat calmly on the couch listening.
Turns out Mike was practicing his 17-minute speech for the Salt Lake County Democratic convention, where he was nominated as the party's choice for Salt Lake County Commission Seat B. He's running against GOP candidate Mark Shurtleff.
As evidenced by his penchant for rehearsal, 40-year-old Mike Reberg is a careful man. He deliberates before making decisions. (He thought about running for the commission two years before he finally filed). He's careful not to personalize things, especially in the rough and tumble of a political campaign.
"I consider myself a quiet optimist," he said.
If nothing else, Reberg has an interesting history. The son of an Ogden Air Force man, he was born in Austin, Texas, and moved to Alaska, Mississippi, California, India, Germany and Virginia before the family finally moved back to Ogden when he was 12.
After graduating from Ogden High School in 1976, Reberg spent a couple of years at Weber State University before taking off to New York, where he managed a ski shop for a year. Returning to Ogden, he wrangled a job writing sports and police stories at the Ogden Standard-Examiner, then moved to Logan to work at the Herald Journal.
It was while he was there, basically working full time and going to Utah State University full time, when he realized that instead of writing about politics, he wanted to do them. He changed his major from journalism to public policy, and he was on his way.
But it wasn't politics, really, that intrigued him. It was more the process of governing.
"To me, politics is what you have to do to run government," he said. "(Running for office) is one of those things I never thought I'd do - I was always interested in politics but behind the scenes."
Reberg won an internship with Randy Horiuchi, then state Democratic Party chairman, in 1985, and wound up on David Watson's 1986 campaign for Salt Lake County Commission. Watson won, and Reberg became his chief of staff.
The person Watson barely beat: one Merrill Cook.
Reberg worked on other campaigns, including Ted Wilson's 1988 bid for governor, then in 1989 took one of those wrenching turns that had defined his life. He went to work for Reagan Outdoor Advertising for a couple of years, handling community relations and political affairs.
Reberg is now a staunch opponent of the county's relaxed billboard ordinance that Reagan pushed through last year.
"I'm not ashamed of (working there)," Reberg now says. "It's part of who I was."
Returning to the county, Reberg worked in the public works department under Horiuchi, who by then was county commissioner, working his way up to associate director. Leslie Reberg is Horiuchi's administrative assistant.
The reason Reberg's running: Not, he says, to fill some innate need to get involved in politics. "I don't see this as a steppingstone to anything."
Rather, he is very specifically focused on the County Commission, because, given his experience with the county and in other areas, he says he can do some good there more than anywhere else.
"I think I have a package of skills and ideas and thoughts that would have a positive impact," he said. "I didn't just decide it was time to run (for something). I thought I could make Salt Lake County run well. What we do in the next few years will dictate what the county looks like 20 years from now."
This is Mike Reberg - the man has various interests, but when he and the wife are lying in bed relaxing before hitting the light, this is what they do: watch "Nightline."
And if that's not on, they watch whatever else is newsy. One recent night they turned on C-Span and watched, fascinated, a debate between two legislative candidates - in Kentucky.
"We're political junkies," he said. "It's kind of what we do."