Republican presidential candidate John Kasich caught attention Monday for saying that some women had “left their kitchens” to support his past political campaigns.
“We just got an army of people — and many women, who left their kitchens to go out and go door-to-door and put yard signs up for me all the way back when things were different,” Kasich said during a campaign stop in Fairfax, Va.
{mosads}Kasich quickly added, “Now you call homes and everybody’s out working, but at that time, early days, it was an army of the women that really helped me to get elected to state senate.”
Later during his speech at George Mason University, Kasich fielded a question from a woman who referenced the Ohio governor’s remark, saying, “I’ll come to support you, but I won’t be coming out of the kitchen.”
“I got you, I got you,” Kasich responded.
The incident comes as Kasich is battling for the support of mainstream voters following the exit of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush after the South Carolina primary on Saturday.
Kasich’s campaign issued a statement in an attempt to explain the remark.
A campaign spokesman said that Kasich’s previous campaigns had “literally been run out of his friends’ kitchens and many of his early campaign teams were made up of stay-at-home moms who believed deeply in the changes he wanted to bring to them and their family.”
“To try and twist his comments into anything else is just desperate politics,” Kasich campaign spokesman Chris Schrimpf added in the statement.