TPM2012

GOP Senate Candidate Invokes Shoes, Beauty Salons When Discussing Women

Pema Levy August 30, 2012, 5:53 PM

Tom Smith, the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, told two women at a recent Paul Ryan event that he assumed they were talking amongst themselves about shoes. A few days later at a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon, Smith compared President Obama and Sen. Bob Casey’s inability to handle the economy to a wife who “wrecks the car” and takes it “to the beauty salon to get it fixed.”

“Perhaps where we’re making our mistake is, that we are asking President Obama and Sen. Bob Casey, to do something they have no knowledge of. They’ve never been in business. They’ve never ran businesses. They don’t have that knowledge. I mean, it would be like, your wife wrecks the car, you gonna take it to the beauty salon to get it fixed? No.”

The Smith campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment from TPM.

Smith made headlines earlier this week when he compared his daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy to rape. “Put yourself in a father’s position, yes, I mean it is similar,” he told reporters at the same Pennsylvania Press Club event. In a follow-up, he said he was not comparing the two situations.

The Democratic Party of Pennsylvania compiled a video reel of Smith making similar comments.

On Aug. 22, Smith made a crack about giving his wife, Saundy, permission to buy a new dress at Stu Bykofsky’s Candidates’ Comedy Night, a Pennsylvania tradition where politicians tell jokes for charity. “Those of you who can see Saundy in her chair, I did allow her to get a new dress for tonight,” he said.

A day earlier, at a Paul Ryan event in Pittsburgh, Smith joked to two women talking together that he figured they were discussing shoes. “All right, what are we talking about here? Two girls together talking,” Smith said to the women. “My guess would have been: You were talking about shoes.”

Watch:

Pema Levy

Pema Levy is a News Writer at TPM covering the 2012 election. Before coming to TPM, Pema was an assistant editor at The American Prospect where she wrote about politics and the economy.