John Kasich was talking about the groundswell of support he received when he got elected to state office when he was 26. | AP Photo Kasich gets grief for saying women 'left their kitchens' to support him

John Kasich is getting grief over a comment he made Monday in which he said women “left their kitchens” to volunteer for his Ohio state senate campaign in 1978.

During a town hall in Fairfax, Virginia, the Ohio governor was talking about the groundswell of support he received when he got elected to state office when he was 26. “How did I get elected [to the legislature]? Nobody was — I didn’t have anybody for me. We just got an army of people, who, and many women, who left their kitchens to go out and go door to door and to put yard signs up for me,” Kasich said. “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.”


The pushback started almost immediately, with one of his own supporters at the town hall giving him some heat over the comment.

“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,” she said.

"I gotcha," Kasich said in response.

Kasich's campaign defended the comments on Monday afternoon, saying people are skewing what he meant.

"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," Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the campaign, said in the statement. "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."

Kasich was asked about the comments during questions with reporters later Monday.

"Well look, when I was a new candidate, I did what I do now. Which is to have a lot of town hall meetings, but they weren't in town halls, they were in kitchens and they were in living rooms. And a big chunk of the people that helped me in my early days and throughout my career, even up til now, have been women and they played a very, very big role," he said.

"Everybody's just got to relax, and the other thing I think you all know is I am not a scripted candidate. I mean I don't use teleprompters. I don't run around with all these notes like lots of people do. I'm real. And maybe sometimes I might say something that isn't artfully said as well as it should be."

"But I'm kind of a real guy and I think people want authenticity. And I'm going to continue to be authentic and every once in a while I'll have to go back and make sure people know what I really mean, when I say something. So I will .. I'll just finish by saying that the involvement of women throughout my entire political career has been a huge, huge positive force in my campaigns and the way in which I conduct affairs in my office," he continued.

But that didn't stop Kasich's critics from jumping all over his comment.

"It's 2016. A woman's place is...wherever she wants it to be," Hillary Clinton tweeted.

Liberal-leaning groups who had endorsed Clinton also leaped at the chance to scold Kasich, with Planned Parenthood Action Fund, a frequent critic of the governor, calling the comment "flat-out insulting."

“Kasich’s condescending attitude toward women needs to stop, whether it’s on the campaign trail or back at home in Ohio. Kasich has enacted 17 restrictions on women’s health, shuttering nearly half the abortion providers in the state. Kasich’s flippant attitude toward women’s lives is causing real harm," said Dawn Laguens, the group's vice president.

Emily's List, who has also endorsed Clinton, weighed in, too: “The only thing that’s more out of touch than this comment is John Kasich’s ongoing effort to strip women in Ohio of their access to health care through defunding Planned Parenthood and signing dangerous legislation that has forced half of Ohio’s women’s health clinics to close," Rachel Thomas, a press secretary for the organization said.