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Calgary’s mayor says he was horrified upon realizing how his “math is challenging” retort to MP Michelle Rempel sounded, but he says her behaviour since his apology has been “odd.”

The war of words between the prominent politicians continued Thursday, with Mayor Naheed Nenshi wading in at the same time Rempel hosted dozens of people in the city’s northwest at a community meeting focused on Alberta’s jobs crisis.

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The feud spurred by non-residential property taxes has played out on Twitter and through the media since Sunday, and it heightened when the mayor told two reporters Tuesday, “Apparently, math is challenging but, hopefully, (Rempel will) figure that out.”

Nenshi later apologized on Twitterfor the remark that Rempel called one of the “most arrogant, out of touch, sexist statements,” she’d heard in public life.

“I was, of course, very horrified when I saw how my words sounded and I apologized within seconds, and what I got was ‘lol’ and she spent hours tweeting and re-tweeting the most vicious personal attacks and insults against me,” Nenshi told reporters Thursday.

“I’ve never seen a politician in Canada do anything like that before, you know, calling me an a-hole, calling me pathetic, for hours. I’m not going to kiss your purple ring. It’s odd behaviour, so clearly she’s not interested in actually talking about the issue with me, so that’s her prerogative.”

In response to those comments, Rempel said on Twitter the issue “shouldn’t be about ego, it should be about coming up with solutions to a severe problem” in Calgary.