COLUMBUS, Ohio – At first, Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper hated Gov. John Kasich, then he wasn’t so bad.

Now, he’s back on the do-not-like list.

The most recent flip-flop comes after Kasich cracked a joke about teachers lounges this week that rubbed Cropper the wrong way, Cincinnati.com reports.

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At an education summit with other presidential hopefuls in New Hampshire Wednesday, Kasich drew laughs from the crowd when he said “If I were not president, but if I was King of America, I would abolish all teacher’s lounges, where they sit together and worry about ‘woe is us,’” according to CNN.

Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols later clarified the governor’s comments.

“He thinks teachers have far more support in their communities than they sometimes give themselves credit for and they shouldn’t pay attention to the small number of pot-stirrers in their ranks who try to leverage problems for political gain,” Nichols said in a statement.

“Anyone thinking he was making a comment on buildings or school architecture or space usage might want to look up the word ‘metaphor’ in a dictionary.”

In an advance article on the New Hampshire education summit, the Columbus Dispatch quoted Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper praising the governor she once blamed for massive teacher layoffs across the state.

Cropper said she supports Hillary Clinton for president, but “if we’re going to have a Republican as president, I’d rather it be John Kasich,” she said.

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“Three years ago, I had no love for the man at all,” she said. “I’ve seen a slow evolution. He surrounded himself with smart people and learned a lesson from what he did with Senate Bill 5. We have been able to talk with him about things.”

Cropper even went as far as to say she believes Kasich “has a genuine, heartfelt belief that he needs to help children and the poor.”

Those remarks were a stark contrast to Cropper rhetoric just a few short years ago, when she blamed Kasich’s education policies for the significant declines in union membership and layoffs tied to budget issues. Kasich also lead the charge for Senate Bill 5, approved by lawmakers in 2011, that stripped unions of their collective bargaining privileges but was later repealed by voters.

“I think the concept the other side tries to create about unions is that we’re selfish, we’re greedy, we are barriers to success, when in actuality we are more interested in providing solutions to the problems we know exist out there,” Cropper told the News Herald in 2012, as the OFT’s membership dwindled to about 16,000 members.

A few short days after remarking about Kasich’s “genuine, heartfelt” desire to “help children and the poor,” however, Cropper reversed course when she heard the governor’s teacher’s lounge joke.

“He’s no longer the least offensive of the Republican candidates,” she told Cincinnati.com. “He didn’t just attack teachers’ unions. He attacked teachers.

“He added his voice to the Republican candidates who want to demonize and vilify teachers and treat them as the problem in education, instead of listening to the solutions that they have,” she said.

But judging by Kasich’s comments about charter schools and teaching unions during the summit Wednesday, it seems unlikely that appeasing union officials like Cropper is part of his campaign strategy.

New Hampshire National Education Association President Scott McGilray told Republican presidential hopefuls they’re the “most anti-public education, anti-working class” candidates in history, but Kasich shot back:

“Education is not for adults. It’s for children,” he said to applause, according to Cincinnatti.com. “If the union was to vote on charters, they would vote ‘no.’ OK, thank you, I appreciate your position. But we’re going to have charters.”

He also criticized unions for standing in the way of educational improvements, particularly in opposition to a state takeover of the failing Youngstown school district.

“We got nine years of failure, and the message is, ‘Just give us a little more time,’” Kasich said. “We may have lost a whole generation of students, and I’m really upset about it.”