Good bye Governor Janet Napolitano, this mom is going to miss you more than you can ever know

As an Arizonan, I am proud of our Governor. If indeed she does receive the nod as secretary of homeland security, she will have earned it. I mean, c'mon, she has been a pretty darn popular Democratic governor in a pretty darn red state. That is no easy accomplishment.

But for those of us who live here in Arizona and don't see eye to eye with our very right-wing dominated legislature, it is frightening to imagine just what is going to happen now that said legislature no longer needs to moderate themselves or face a veto pen. And when our Secretary of State, Jan Brewer, moves up to fill the empty Governor seat, we are going to see a big lurch to the right with a heavy emphasis on social issues and immigration.

But I am very sad to see Governor Napolitano leave for another reason as well, a very selfish reason. All three of my children chose to leave Arizona and go to school out-of-state. All three chose universities in very progressive cities. And all three fell in love with the cities in which they chose to go to school. And I don't see any of them ever choosing to come back to Arizona, at least not the Arizona we will have now.

I am a native Arizonan. I will always have a special place in my heart for this state, but I am not sure that I blame my children for not coming back. Anymore, our young people equate today's Conservative values with authoritarian, oppressive religious values that take us back to the stone ages.

When people are stripped of civil rights in the name of someone else's religious beliefs, it's pretty hard to argue that Arizona is moving forward. Heck, when I watched a state legislator cut her vacation short to fly back to a waiting limosine that whisked her back to the State Capital in time to cast the deciding vote that put a proposition on the ballot that would allow a majority to deny a minority rights everyone else enjoys and yet another state legislator with 5 marriages under her own belt passionately preach about her need to protect the sanctity of everyone else's marriage, I started weighing the pros and cons of getting the hell out of Arizona too. So how on earth can I blame my children for not wanting to come back?

I can't and I don't.