Colorado Democrats reelected state chair Shad Murib to a second two-year term Saturday at a reorganization meeting of the party’s central committee in Aurora.

Murib, a veteran campaign strategist and former top political staffer, told the roughly 300 Democrats who packed an auditorium that, even though Colorado voters only shifted barely toward Republicans in the November election — bucking a national trend that swept Donald Trump into the White House and gave the GOP control of Congress — the party has to retool its approach in the still-blue state.

“We will redesign and rebuild our party to reclaim victories across the state,” Murib said in a statement after the meeting.

“We will reimagine how we organize from our phone screens to the doors, and compete aggressively in every race — including for school board and city council — because every election matters. We are going to fight in every congressional district, including beating Gabe Evans and winning a Democratic House.”

When he announced his bid for a second term atop the party weeks after last year’s general election, Murib told Colorado Politics that state Democrats need to “really dig in to each part of the state and figure out what works and what doesn’t and double down on what worked.”

For the fifth presidential election running, the Democratic ticket carried the state, with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz defeating Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, by 11 percentage points — the second-widest margin claimed by Democratic nominees since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide, lagging Joe Biden’s 13.5-point margin of victory in 2020.

The party also won the only statewide race on the ballot, with Elliott Hood keeping the University of Colorado’s at-large regent seat in the party’s hands, and Democrats maintained near-historic majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.

It wasn’t all good news for the party’s candidates by the time votes were counted, however.

In an expensive battle for the state’s most competitive U.S. House seat, the Northern Front Range’s 8th Congressional District, Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans defeated Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo by less than 1 percentage point. In the same district, Republican Yazmin Navarro unseated Democratic State Board of Education member Rhonda Solis by a roughly 5-point margin.

Republicans also flipped three Democratic-held seats in the state House of Representatives and prevented Democrats from winning a supermajority in the state Senate by keeping the parties’ numbers the same in that chamber.

At Saturday’s party election, Murib prevailed with 68% of the vote over two former state party vice chairs, Jarrod Munger and Stephanie Bowman, who oversaw operations and demographic outreach, respectively.

Also at the meeting, Democrats reelected 1st Vice Chair Indira Duggirala, 2nd Vice Chair Scott Mangino and Secretary Josh Trupin, who were all seeking second terms on a slate with Murib. The lone new member of the party’s state officer team will be Treasurer Andy Yaste, whose predecessor didn’t run for another term.

Colorado’s Republican Party is scheduled to elect its statewide officers on March 29 at a church in Colorado Springs. At last count, five candidates had launched bids to replace outgoing state party chairman Dave Williams, who isn’t seeking a second term.