COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill on Friday said she doesn't take seriously a longshot Republican candidate for her seat who is facing criticism for his comments about women.

McCaskill said after a campaign event at the University of Missouri in Columbia she feels sorry for Courtland Sykes if he really believes the remarks he recently posted on Facebook.

Sykes in the posting wrote that he wants to come home to dinner cooked by his fiancee every night and said he wants girls to grow up to "build home-based enterprises and live in homes shared with good husbands."

"I don't want them grow up into career-obsessed banshees who forego home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the tops of a thousand tall buildings they are think they could have leaped over in a single bound -- had men not 'suppressing them,"' Sykes wrote.

Sykes did not immediately return Associated Press requests for comment Friday.

"I don't really take him seriously," McCaskill told reporters, later adding "if he's trying to get attention, it maybe is working."

Sykes faces steep odds to get the Republican nomination. Attorney General Josh Hawley is widely considered to be the frontrunner.

Republican strategist James Harris, who worked with Hawley when he entered the race for attorney general, said Sykes is not a credible candidate.

"This guy's not ready or qualified to run for dogcatcher, much less U.S. Senate where you have to recognize that your words matter," Harris said.

Sykes is relatively unknown. As of the most recent campaign finance reports through the end of September, he had raised $500.