Our new governor here in Ohio has a police problem:

Looking for ammunition against a bill to strip collective bargaining rights, public unions have seized on a verbal insult the Ohio governor used repeatedly last month to describe a police officer who pulled him over in a traffic stop three years ago.

Critics are distributing a video of Gov. John Kasich at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in January describing a 2008 stop along a state highway in which he was cited for passing too close to an emergency vehicle.

The officer, Robert Barrett, told Kasich he’d face an arrest warrant if he didn’t show up in court.

“He’s an idiot,” Kasich said. “You just can’t act that way.”

Passing to close to an emergency vehicle is a law in Ohio. It was put in because of the increased number of public safety employees being injured because of cars passing to close when they were out attending to emergencies.

But it gets even better. Kasich was trying to explain away his comments:

“The governor, of course, respects the important work of law enforcement officers and regrets his poor choice of words in describing his frustration in receiving a ticket,” Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said in a statement obtained MyFox28 in Columbus, Ohio. “The point of the governor’s remarks to Ohio EPA employees was to stress that all public employees must provide better, more response service to taxpayers.”

And that’s exactly what the officer who gave Kasich the ticket was doing, yet for providing better service, he gets called an “idiot” by the man now running this state. This is Republican governance in all its glory.