A congressman from Minnesota once said on a radio show that political correctness has unfairly hindered him from calling women “sluts,” according to a report on Wednesday.

Rep. Jason Lewis, a Republican from the Minneapolis suburb of Burnsville, hosted a radio program – the “Jason Lewis Show” – from 2009 to 2014, CNN reported.

“But it used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard. We required modesty from women,” he said in a March 2012 episode.

“Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can’t call her a slut?”

Lewis’ campaign manager Becky Alery brushed off the “slut” comment in a statement to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: “This has all been litigated before, and as Rep. Lewis has said time and time again, it was his job to be provocative while on the radio.”

Lewis is in a tough re-election campaign, facing Democrat Angie Craig, a former healthcare executive. Lewis won the 2nd Congressional District seat in 2016, beating Lewis by 1.8 percentage points.