Senate minority leader Harry Reid brushed aside New Hampshire governor Maggie Hassan’s demand that he walk back his “disparaging” and “insulting” remarks about her state on Tuesday, offering a token apology before sarcastically doubling down on the comments.

During a Monday night event on the eve of the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Reid was asked about his work to move Nevada up in the pack of early primary states while he was majority leader. “I have been a student of government for a long, long time, and I was always terribly upset about how we were choosing our presidents,” he said. “You go to New Hampshire — there aren’t any minorities there; nobody lives there. You go to Iowa, and there are a few people there. But again, it is a place that does not demonstrate what America is all about, for a lot of different reasons.”

The comments sparked outrage on both sides of the aisle in New Hampshire. Republicans called on Governor Hassan, a Democrat who is running for the Senate, to reject Reid’s political support and put a stop to New Hampshire campaign ads funded by his Senate Majority PAC. Hassan, in turn, released a statement calling Reid’s “disparaging” comments “as insulting as they are wrong,” and adding that “an apology would certainly be appropriate.”

#share#Reid responded to the kerfuffle during a presser today at Las Vegas’s Wynn Hotel, just hours before the first Democratic debate. “Let me get something out of the way real quick,” he said. “Last night, I said that I was very happy to work to get the system changed, because I thought it was wrong that the states of Iowa and New Hampshire were the ones deciding who we were going to have running for president.”

“And I said New Hampshire was a state without many people and without a lot of minorities,” he continued. “I’ve received a request from someone to apologize. I do that.”

“New Hampshire is heavily populated and loaded with minorities,” the Senate minority leader said sarcastically, raising his hands in mock surrender as the press corps laughed. “So I apologize.”

— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.