GOP Senate candidate: Women have to be talked to on an 'emotional level'

A Republican candidate for Senate from Iowa says he's had lessons communicating with women and has learned that they need to be talked to on an "emotional level."

Last week, staffers for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told Politico that Republican candidates were being tutored on how to speak to female voters in response to the so-called GOP “War on Women.”

In an interview on Sunday, WHO-TV's Dave Price asked candidate Mark Jacobs what was so different about communicating with the female electorate.

"I think you have to connect with women on an emotional level," Jacobs explained. "And with a wife of 25 years and an 18-year-old daughter, I've had a lot of coaching on that."

During the interview, the candidate also insisted that he had never voted for a Democrat.

Jennifer Lawless, the director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University, told The Huffington Post that talking to female voters like a husband or a father "plays into damaging stereotypes and reinforces the notion that women need to be treated in a way that is somehow less serious and cerebral."

"Certainly, there can be gender gaps on issue salience -- women, for example, might be more concerned than men about issues affecting women, families, and children," she pointed out. "But it’s the attention candidates spend on those issues and their ability to demonstrate that they understand challenges women face that matter."

Watch this video from WHO-TV, broadcast Dec. 8, 2013.