Kelly's Kerfuffle with Jackass Jones

I know Kelly Rossman-McKinney. We worked together in the Blanchard administration back in the 1980s and her son, Alex, was my friend, landlord and neighbor when I rented the upstairs apartment in a house his family owned in downtown Lansing a few years ago. I have friends who’ve worked for Kelly; I myself tried to snag an interview at her public relations firm several years ago but she wasn’t interested.

While I was disappointed, I never thought she was a hooker.

Courtesy Herb Woerpel

State Senator Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge) recently compared the public relations expert to a Lady of the Night in a widely-read state capital newsletter and the you-know-what has hit the fan. Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer wrote a scathing op-ed in the Detroit Free Press entitled, “Blatant sexism overtakes respect and decency in state legislature,” and a number of others in and out of the blogosphere are taking Jones to task for his brutish behavior. (Hard to believe the guy’s been married for 36 years.)

Kelly’s not just a Lansing player; she’s a resident of the 24th state senate district that Jones has represented since November of 2010. That’s right: he publicly insulted one of his own constituents.

Courtesy David Trumpie

Free Press columnist Brian Dickerson points out that women are a dying breed under the Capitol dome. Dickerson says, “Michigan, which once boasted a greater percentage of female legislators than all but 20 other states, now ranks 36th out of 50 – its lowest ranking in 35 years.” It seems like just yesterday that voters chose Jennifer Granholm to be Michigan’s first female governor, but it was actually ten years ago. Apparently boorish conservatives have since come to town.

In my experience, gender really doesn’t matter. I’ve known strong women and weak men. I was taught that women are equal to (and often better than) men in almost every way. My first boss, when I moved to Lansing in 1983 to work in the governor’s mailroom, was a woman named Donna Kauffman. Donna was big and loud – she was tall and had a ready, boisterous laugh – and she taught me a great deal about getting along with others, being professional and working and playing hard. Donna was loyal, sensitive, tough and talented and had a fantastic sense of humor. I still miss being around her all these years later. (She died of cancer in the early 1990s.)

While I wouldn’t say we were “close,” I was fortunate enough to be in the same room as Martha W. Griffiths several times. (Once we even had lunch together.) Griffiths, who served in Congress from 1955 to 1974 (and was the first woman to serve on the powerful Ways and Means Committee) and was Michigan’s first elected female lieutenant governor from 1983 to 1991, was known as the “Mother of the Equal Rights Amendment.” She was also most responsible for including the prohibition of sex discrimination under Title VII in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Some say Blanchard’s dumping her from the ticket cost him his 1990 re-election bid.

Former state senator Lana Pollack – a prominent figure who served in the Senate from 1983 to 1994, was once publicly labeled “shrill and strident” by a male colleague, and was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 2002 – signed my paychecks during most of the ten years I worked at the Michigan Environmental Council (from 1996 to 2006) and taught me invaluable lessons about living and working. While we didn’t always agree and our last year or so together was less than stellar, I remain thankful to this day that I was lucky enough to spend time in her circle.

Carol Misseldine, Lana’s predecessor at MEC who had hired me, also had a profound impact on me; I find myself thinking a lot about the lessons I learned about life from Carol. One of the things she taught me was to be gentle with myself, that the path I was supposed to take was right under my feet. I refer to this and other tidbits from Carol – who could kick Mr. Miyagi’s ass in the wisdom department – almost daily.

Maybe Senator Jones just never had the good fortune to learn from women.

I wouldn’t want to work for some of the clients that Kelly Rossman-McKinney’s represented. But her firm consistently ranks near the top of the list of Lansing’s most effective PR/lobbying agencies and her bank account and reputation are a lot bigger than mine. She’s doing something right.

I bet she can kick Jones’ ass too.

Source: Detroit Free Press.