I didn’t know Kelly Rossman-McKinney particularly well, but she was that kind of person who made fast friends with everyone she met.

It served her well in her work.

An adviser to former Democratic Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard, co-founder of one of Michigan’s most successful public relations and consultancy firms, advisor to and spokeswoman for Michigan’s current Democratic attorney general, and much, much more, Rossman-McKinney died Tuesday at age 67 in a losing fight with cancer.

The state and her many, many friends lost something special.

I first met Rossman-McKinney in 2014 or 2015. I’d worked at the Lansing State Journal as a state government reporter for a little while, and Rossman-McKinney invited me to lunch just to get to know me and offer her help wherever she could.

At the time, Rossman-McKinney was co-head of Truscott-Rossman, the PR firm she’d founded in 2011 with John Truscott, who’d worked for Blanchard’s Republican successor, John Engler.

Rossman-McKinney had a lot of personal attributes — kindness and wit chief among them — that made her fun to spend time with and good to know.

But, when I learned of Rossman-McKinney’s death, the first thing to spring to my mind was her relationship with Truscott.

Bipartisan PR firms are not entirely uncommon. It’s good for business, after all, to have connections down both sides of the aisle.

But, of all the flacks and politicos I’ve known in my career, none seemed to genuinely like and care for each other, despite their genuine political disagreements, the way Truscott and Rossman-McKinney did.

Truscott and Rossman-McKinney were pros. They spoke for their clients and, if the client asked it, both have defended some things I’d call indefensible.

But, face-to-face and off-contract, both were practical, common-sense politicos who understood where both sides came from and what both sides needed and wanted.

You could get straight answers out of them.

They’d help you.

Most of my conversations with Truscott happened through his role on the State Capitol Commission, the panel that oversees the buildings and grounds of the historic statehouse in downtown Lansing. In that role, Truscott always answered the phone when I called, always shot straight with me, and always pointed me in the right directions.

Rossman-McKinney repeatedly helped me fill in my gaps on state political history and helped me make connections with the right people to get my stories done. She spoke frankly with me when I covered her as a candidate for the state Senate.

Years later, when I’d moved up here to Alpena and she’d joined Attorney General Dana Nessel’s team after the 2018 election, Rossman-McKinney answered when I called and then went out of her way to help me bring Nessel to Alpena for a community presentation about the Michigan Freedom of Information Act.

If only for that, I’d say a prayer of gratitude for having known Rossman-McKinney before her death.

But I am most thankful to have seen her and Truscott up close, showing what political discourse ought to look like.

Make no mistake: Truscott is a Republican, Rossman-McKinney a Democrat. Both have defended their parties and attacked the other.

But, watching the two of them interact in their office in downtown Lansing, as I had the chance to do on a few occasions, one could not mistake a genuine affection between them, and the partisan differences never showed.

They joked. They laughed. They asked about each other’s families and about each other’s projects, including their political affairs. You could tell they honestly wanted the other to do well, even if their partner’s success would mean something else for themselves.

“With her passing, I’ve lost more than a business partner,” Truscott told the Detroit Free Press this week. “I’ve lost a best friend, my work wife, and one of the most heroic people I’ve ever met.”

It’s hard to imagine that kind of love between many other Republicans and Democrats these days.

So Truscott’s loss is politics’ loss. Is Michigan’s loss, because we lost one side of that coin of decency that she and Truscott kept in their office across the street from the state Capitol.

And that kind of coin is becoming rare currency, indeed.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.