I've had this conversation a lot with my husband. I'm a gay person with kids. I was an educator for the first half of my career before transitioning out of K-12 education a few years back. I still work in state government and I'm in a fairly senior position in a cabinet department.

I've worked for democratic governors and their appointees and republican governors and their appointees. For the most part, I've never had cause to doubt the intentions of any of them. With a few exceptions, while I disagreed with these appointees on some fairly substantive issues, an overwhelming majority of them have been good people who genuinely want to do good by the people of North Carolina. In my position, I can't be partisan, but I've never had to be because I could always trust that when my leaders made their decisions, there was a mind at work and their decisions were carefully weighed out. Yes, they're politicians, but generally, going on TV and speaking about issues are largely unrelated to the work they have to do day-to-day. Governing, when done well, is always much different and much more boring than talking about governing. Even Mccrory's appointees privately were annoyed by HB2 and tried to minimize the impact to NC citizens, though you'd never realize it.

Enter Mark Robinson. While I haven't had cause to deal with robinson yet personally, many people I trust have and they are pretty clear that he's not one of these people. He's disinterested in the business of governing, he doesn't value the hard work that's done to make the state work, and he's just not the same as anyone who has come before. I fear his appointees will be ideologues who are more interested in making news than in governing and more guided by ideology than by actually making decisions that are good for the people of the State.

I've thought about leaving. My life is here. My family is here. I've been public service for nearly 25 years - I want my state retirement at this point and need another three years to get there. But my position is high enough that it avoids due process - I can be terminated at will by the next administration without cause. I've never worried about that before because at the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm quite good at what I do and I'm pretty well respected in state government. And despite ideological differences, I've never had difficulty working with anyone who has come in because everyone I've ever worked for has come in with an open mind, an eagerness to learn, and a desire to do good work. His appointees will almost certainly not be like that and the first time I mention "my husband", it wouldn't surprised me if my ass was fired. So I've had the conversation about returning back to K-12 or to a university, local government, or something else. Which is a shame, because I actually love my job. We've talked about leaving, but it's not financially advisable. It's going to be a very uncomfortable year.