John Kasich: Women "left their kitchens" to elect me
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is under fire from some Democratic groups for saying that women "left their kitchens" to help support him during his first campaign for state senate in 1979, at age 26.
During an event in Fairfax, Virginia Monday, the 2016 presidential candidate reflected on how he was able to win his first campaign, back when "things were different."
"How did I get elected?" he said. "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 put yard signs up for me all the way back when 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," he added.
A few minutes later a woman who said she was a nursing student at George Mason University, where the event took place, weighed in.
"I'll come to support you, but I won't be coming out of the kitchen," she said.
"I got ya, I got ya," Kasich said, laughing.
The remark immediately produced a backlash from groups like Priorities USA Action, the super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton, and NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Hillary Clinton tweeted, too.
"When I heard John Kasich's latest offensive views on women and our rights, I almost dropped the casserole I was taking out of the oven!" said NARAL president Ilyse Hogue.
Hogue used the remarks to draw attention to Kasich's record on funding for Planned Parenthood. On Sunday, Kasich signed a bill from the Ohio legislature that cuts off more than $1.3 million in state funding that had gone to the group. The funding had been used for programs like HIV counseling and educational programs, not abortion, Planned Parenthood said.
Speaking to reporters afterward, Kasich agreed with the sentiment in Clinton's tweet, pointing out that there's no shortage of women in his political orbit. His campaign manager is a woman, his only appointment to the Ohio Supreme Court is a woman, and his lieutenant governor is a woman, so "everybody's just gotta relax," Kasich said. He conceded that he hadn't spoken "as artfully" as he could have, but he said that's because he's not scripted and talks off the cuff. "I'm a real guy, and I think people want authenticity," he said.
Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols called the criticism "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," he said in a 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."
CBS News Digital Journalist Erica Brown contributed to this story