Washington: US Republican presidential candidate John Kasich said Monday that women "left their kitchens" to support him during an early race for the Ohio state senate in the 1970s, triggering pushback from voters and rivals.
"How did I get elected?" Kasich asked rhetorically during a campaign event in Virginia.
"Nobody was -- I didn't have anybody for me. We just got an army of people... many women, who left their kitchens to go out and go door to door and to put yard signs up for me. All the way back, when, you know, things were different.
"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 get elected to the state Senate," Kasich added.
Kasich, who now serves as Ohio's governor, first ran for the state senate in 1978.
A woman attending the Virginia town hall later quipped: "First off, I want to say -- your comment earlier about the women came out the kitchen to support you? I'll come to support you, but I won't be coming out of the kitchen."
The woman also asked a question about Kasich signing a bill on Sunday to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and family planning services.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was quick to jump on Kasich's remarks to suggest he was out of touch with women.
"It's 2016. A woman's place is... wherever she wants it to be," Clinton tweeted.
Kasich later told reporters he would try to be "a bit more careful" going forward but plans to stay unscripted.
"I'll continue to operate on a high wire without a net. And frankly, I'd like to see everyone who is running for president get out of the scripted role and start to be real and take questions," he said.
Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols sought to defuse the controversy, dismissing the backlash as "desperate politics."
"John Kasich's campaigns have always been homegrown affairs. They've 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 families," Nichols said.
"That's real grassroots campaigning and he's proud of that authentic support. To try and twist his comments into anything else is just desperate politics."
AFP
