The Democratic Missouri senator Claire McCaskill has said she does not take seriously a long-shot Republican candidate for her seat who is facing criticism for his comments about women.

Courtland Sykes wrote in a recent Facebook post that he wants to come home to dinner cooked by his fiancee every night and said he wants girls to grow up to “build home based enterprises and live in homes shared with good husbands”.



He added: “I don’t want them grow up into career-obsessed banshees who forego home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting, manophobic, hell-bent feminist she-devils who shriek from the tops of a thousand tall buildings they think they could have leaped over in a single bound – had men not ‘suppressing them’.”

Speaking after a campaign event at the University of Missouri in Columbia on Friday, McCaskill said she felt sorry for Courtland Sykes if he really believed the remarks.

“I don’t really take him seriously,” McCaskill told reporters, later adding: “If he’s trying to get attention, it maybe is working.”



Sykes did not immediately return requests for comment.

He faces steep odds to get the Republican nomination. State attorney general Josh Hawley is widely considered to be the frontrunner.

Republican strategist James Harris, who worked with Hawley when he entered the race for attorney general, said Sykes was not a credible candidate.

“This guy’s not ready or qualified to run for dogcatcher, much less US Senate where you have to recognize that your words matter,” Harris said.

Sykes is relatively unknown. As of the most recent campaign finance reports through the end of September, he had raised $500.