A Republican House candidate is catching some heat after a video surfaced of him berating a police officer during a routine traffic stop in Florida.
Martin Hyde, who is running in Florida's 16th congressional district, was caught on police body camera threatening to end the officer's career because she pulled him over in Sarasota on Valentine's Day.
In video of the exchange, the officer told Hyde he was driving 57 in a 40-mile-an-hour zone and was also seen texting on his phone.
Hyde, 56, responded by saying he was going to call the chief, adding "You know who I am, right?" and "You're talking to a congressional candidate."
"Big mistake, you're making career decisions," he said.
As Hyde refused to cooperate with repeated requests for his license and registration, he threatened the officer's job and asked her if she was behaving that way because she was an immigrant.
Body camera footage shows he asked the officer, "Is it your Russian immigrant status that makes you talk to people like this?"
The officer called her supervisor to the scene and several other patrol cars responded.
"We're going to make sure she pays the price for being disrespectful," Hyde told one of the officers. He mentioned to another that the officer was on a "big power trip."
The congressional hopeful eventually addressed the situation after video of the traffic stop spread online and was picked up by several outlets.
"During the stop I was belligerent and rude to the officer who stopped me," Hyde wrote on Facebook, according to Florida Politics. "I'm not going to justify my poor temper on that day or attempt to mitigate it in any way. There will be some who will say it's not the first time I've acted out and they'd be right. I have faults and one of them is to be overly aggressive on occasion when I'm challenged. In the political arena that is possibly a good thing but on a personal level it's not."
In an interview with 10 Tampa Bay, Hyde admitted he tried to bully the officer.
"You know, I acted a bit like a 'Karen' there. I wanted to call the manager or somebody who can change something that I didn't like," he said.
Hyde went on to say he's apologized to the officer and the community, and that he will do his "utmost to behave better going forward."
Sarasota Police are not commenting on the incident.
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