OTTUMWA, Ia. — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signaled Tuesday she's lost her patience with U.S. Rep. Steve King, who narrowly won a ninth term in the U.S. House last week despite a firestorm of criticism for aligning himself with far-right European politicians and repeatedly making remarks many have deemed racist.

Reynolds, a Republican who defeated Democrat Fred Hubbell in a close race to win a full four-year term, offered a bluntly worded response when asked by a reporter if she had visited with King about a series of controversies he has been facing.

Reynolds said she hasn't talked with the Iowa congressman because she has been busy since the election. But, she added, “I think that Steve King needs to make a decision if he wants to represent the people and the values of the 4th District or do something else, and I think he needs to take a look at that.”

Reynolds then told reporters she is focused on doing positive things for Iowa and continuing to grow the state.

John Kennedy, a spokesman for King in Washington, D.C., issued a statement Tuesday in response to Reynolds' comments, which ignored her critique. Rather, the statement embraced Reynolds.

"Congressman King loves Gov. Reynolds, is thankful to her for signing his heartbeat bill into law, and notes that they are birds of a feather because they won by similar margins," Kennedy said.

The "heartbeat bill" is legislation King supports on the state and federal levels that would ban most abortions after about six weeks. The Iowa law is on hold, pending a lawsuit filed by opponents. The federal proposal hasn't been enacted.

King was a co-chairman of Reynolds' campaign for governor, and while she has disagreed with controversial statements he's made in the past, this was the first time she has issued such a broad criticism of the long-time representative and openly expressed frustration with him.

Neither she nor her campaign responded to questions about her relationship with King in the final weeks of the campaign and appeared with him in the final days of the election.

“I think it’s a little too little and a little too late. She had an opportunity to say this when it mattered, and she chose not to," said Democrat Jeff Link, an adviser to Hubbell's campaign. "She didn’t want to offend Steve King’s voters; she wanted to do anything to get through Election Day.”

As governor, Reynolds is a key state party leader, and her new remarks signal the possibility that she might not support him if he faces a Republican primary challenge for Congress in 2020.

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King defeated Democrat J.D. Scholten, a former professional baseball player from Sioux City, by a 50-47 percent margin last week. It was the closest race the incumbent from Kiron has faced since first elected to Congress in 2002. The 4th District is Iowa's most rural and a heavily Republican congressional district, covering 39 counties in north-central and northwest Iowa.

King has a history of making outspoken comments about immigration and multiculturalism, LGBTQ rights, affirmative action, climate change and a host of other issues.

But heading into the final days before the Nov. 6 election, he was rebuked by two of Iowa's Jewish leaders, disavowed by several prominent Republicans and abandoned by the National Republican Congressional Committee. In addition, several major U.S. companies announced they will no longer donate campaign money to King.

The congressman rejected the criticism, blaming "fake news" and "Never Trumpers" for attacking him. He and his supporters have contended he's regularly misquoted or quoted out of context, while his critics claim he's racist and bad-mannered.

A significant impetus to the latest controversy was a Washington Post story that said King had met in August in Austria with members of the Freedom Party, a political organization founded by a former Nazi SS officer, after having visited Holocaust sites in Poland. He also granted an interview with Unzensuriert, a website associated with Austria's Freedom Party.

King insisted the meeting was simply with a group of business people who happened to include a Freedom Party member and he claimed the Washington Post story was false. Editors at the Washington Post have said that they stand by their reporting.

The controversy reached a crescendo just days before the election, when King angrily denied racist and extremist ties in remarks at a candidate forum sponsored by the Greater Des Moines Partnership. He also shouted down a member of the public who compared King's views and ideology to those of the suspect accused of killing 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

On Election Day, King barred the Des Moines Register and several other news organizations from his campaign's victory party at a Sioux City hotel, blasting the Register as a "leftist propaganda" outlet.

More recently, King battled with the Weekly Standard, a conservative news outlet that he also barred from his election night event.

Over the weekend, the Republican congressman accused the magazine of making up that he called immigrants "dirt" and demanded it release the audio of him saying such a thing.

The Weekly Standard published the audio Monday in which he clearly made the remarks the magazine had reported he'd made.

Brianne Pfannenstiel and Robin Opsahl contributed to this report.