Ohio Gov. John Kasich introduced his family to American voters in a televised town hall Monday night. John’s wife Karen and the couple’s 16-year-old twin girls Emma and Reese, painted the candidate as a family man, hitting heavily on how he treats women and others.
Mrs. Kasich was among the first to respond to a question from a CNN town hall audience member regarding John’s respect for women.
“I’m a pretty strong person and I wouldn’t be with a man who didn’t show me respect and show my daughters respect,” Karen responded. “That’s just the way he behaves. I don’t see him working at respecting us, I see him living that, like in the way he treats us and the way our family operates together.”
Mrs. Kasich, who left her job at a healthcare advertising agency to become a full-time mom when the twins were two, said she also envisioned maintaining that focus if her husband was elected to the Oval Office, calling herself a “mom first and first lady, second.”
When asked about possible charity work or causes she would get behind as first lady, Mrs. Kasich voiced interest in human trafficking.
“I never realized that until I became first lady [of Ohio] that human trafficking is such a problem in this country and even in our home state,” she said.
Host Anderson Cooper circled back to policy issues between audience questions, directing most of them to the candidate.
Kasich criticized fellow Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz for calling on police to monitor Muslim neighborhoods and implement a religious test for Syrian refugees. Kasich called the two candidates’ ideas “whimsical” and said the U.S. should be uniting people, but his daughter Reese one-upped his calls for unity.
“It’s the United States of America, not the divided,” Reese chimed in.
