New Jersey Senate candidate Phil Mitsch is sorry for saying that women should be “a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom” — but he’s still not backing out of the race.
“I would like to sincerely apologize for any offense I may have caused anyone, particularly women, as a result of a Twitter post that has recently been reported,” Mitsch said.
Mitsch, a Republican in Camden County, has been getting slammed over the past few days for a September 2nd tweet that said: “Women, you increase your odds of keeping your men by being faithful, a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom.”
He initially refused to apologize, saying Thursday morning: “I am definitely not apologizing for those two tweets at all. They were relationship tips. ‘Stud in the bedroom’ and ‘whore in the bedroom,’ those are timeworn adages.”
On Wednesday, he told the Philadelphia Inquirer that his tweet was a “great tip” and “shows the utmost respect for women. … What I was trying to say to men was, ‘Men, look, if you got to go out and play around and you can’t be honest with a woman and respect her, then you’re better off just doing pay, play, and get the ‘F’ away.’”
According to Joelle Farrell of the Inquirer, Camden County GOP Chairman Thomas Booth Jr. demanded that Mitsch apologize and threatened to pull his support for Mitsch in the election.
So by the end of Thursday Mitsch was backtracking. “The specific tweet in question is an age-old saw most notably quoted by Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger’s ex-wife, in the early 1990’s: ‘My mother said in order to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, and a whore in the bedroom,’ ” Mitsch said in the statement. “I updated her quote with the fact that men should ‘be faithful, a gentleman in the living room and a stud in the bedroom,’ but looking back, I didn’t update the original terminology enough to reflect 21st century sensibilities.”
“How the voter interprets my response to [the tweets], I don’t care. I don’t care if I get elected or not,” Mitsch said. “People came after me to run. It would be a tragedy to be denied … over stupid tweets that are misinterpreted.”
The New Jersey GOP called Mitsch “unfit for public office,” and said that despite the apology, he should back out of the race. “Our position will not change,” State GOP spokesman Rick Gorka said Thursday. The NJ GOP did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment.
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