During a town hall event in Iowa Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich compared the belt-tightening of balancing the national budget to a more personal brand of discipline, asking a female attendee if she’d “ever been on a diet.”
Kasich was answering the woman’s question about corruption in government, and decided to use a dieting analogy to make the national debt more relatable.
“Have you ever been on a diet?” Kasich asked the woman, who said “many times” in response.
Kasich responded with a laugh: “You’re the perfect example!”
“So you set a goal and and you reach it, and then what happens? How about a little spumoni, how about a trip to Mario’s,” Kasich continued, referring to possible weight loss incentives.
It wasn’t the first awkward interaction Kasich – who has been polling at about 2 percent in Iowa – has had with women at his campaign events.
During an appearance at the University of Richmond in October, the governor reportedly told a female student “I’m sure you get invited to all the parties,” and laughed off her question, saying: “I’m sorry, I don’t have any Taylor Swift tickets.”
Watch Kasich’s remarks, via Mic’s Elizabeth Plank, below:
