The party first contested national elections in 1902, when Máximo Fernández Alvarado was its presidential candidate.
Fernández finished second to National Union Party candidate Ascensión Esquivel Ibarra.
Although Fernández received the most votes in the 1913 presidential elections, he failed to secure a majority and declined to take up the post;[2] Congress subsequently elected Alfredo González Flores as president.
Costa Rica was briefly a one-party state under President Federico Tinoco Granados for the 1917 and January 1919 elections.
In the 1932 elections, Jiménez Ortiz was the party's presidential candidate again, but he finished third behind Jiménez Oreamuno (now running as the National Republican Party candidate) and Manuel Castro Quesada [es] of the Republican Union.