After electing Jiménez on three occasions, the party also secured the election of León Cortés Castro in 1936, Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia in 1940 and Teodoro Picado Michalski in 1944 becoming a dominant party. During Calderón's leadership the party moved toward Christian democracy and Christian socialism making some of the country's first social reforms in alliance with the Communist Party. Criticism over corruption, authoritarianism and voting fraud against the party and the results of the 1948 election in which the republican-dominated Congress overturned the elections because its candidate Calderón apparently lost because of the 1948 Civil War. After that the party was banned for a while and its leaders Calderón and Picado in exile. The party would still remain relevant in the political system once democracy was restored but would only attain power in coalition with liberal forces (the party endorsed the successful candidacies of Mario Echandi and José Joaquín Trejos as part of alliances with other parties), eventually disappearing.