New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had another one of his infamous encounters with a constituent. This time, it was a kindergarten teacher who had some advice on his demeanor.

“You need to tone it down a little if you want to become President of the United States,” Cheryl Meyer told Christie at a town hall meeting in Old Bridge, New Jersey.

Christie bristled at the suggestion.

“There are some people who just believe that if you’re a public figure, that they’re allowed to be rude—that they can say anything to you and because you’re a public figure, you have to respond politely because that’s the rule,” the governor said. “I don’t see it that way.”

He said he would “rather go home” than change his style in an attempt to appeal to more voters.

Meyer said she’s had a hard time explaining to her 5-year-olds how the governor can get away with calling people “idiots” or telling them to “shut up” when children aren’t allowed to act that way.

“I could say, ‘Jersey—we’re just Jersey,”’ the teacher from Woodbridge said, according to Bloomberg. “That’s not going to work in the United States.”

He said a “vanilla” demeanor isn’t genuine to him.

“If it turns out, whether it’s for the people of the state or for the people of the country—if I ever chose to do that—that that wasn’t their cup of tea? I’d rather go home,” he said.

It wasn’t Christie’s first run-in with a teacher.

In 2013, he argued with public school teacher Melissa Tomlinson over calling schools “failure factories.”

“I am tired of you people,” he told her.

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten demanded an apology, saying Christie talked to the Tomlinson “in such a hostile and intimidating way.”