Salina ? Lee Kinch, a longtime Kansas Democratic Party activist, officially took over as the state party’s new chairman Saturday, declaring, “The Democratic Party is the party of government.”

“Fundamentally, we believe that government has a responsibility to improve the human condition,” Kinch told more than 160 delegates at a special meeting of the party’s state committee in Salina. “Our mission is to make government work not just for the well-born and the wealthy, but for all the people.”

Kinch succeeds Larry Meeker, of Johnson County, who was forced out of the chairmanship in August after only five months on the job amid controversy over media statements he made suggesting that Kansas Democrats needed to re-brand themselves to appeal to a broader, more conservative voter base, and that not all Democrats support key points in the party platform regarding abortion and gay rights.

Lee Kinch, a Wichita attorney and longtime Democratic Party activist, was elected chairman of the state party Saturday at a special meeting of the state committee in Salina.

Meeker resigned just as the party’s mid-year “DemoFest” convention in Wichita was getting underway. But the party could not act to name a new chairman at that time because party officials had neglected to send out a formal notice, as required by its bylaws, that the state committee would be meeting.

That mix-up seemed to symbolize the problems of a state political party that has suffered consistently at the polls over the past several election cycles. In 2014, for the third election cycle in a row, Democrats saw a net loss of seats in the Kansas Legislature while Republicans swept every statewide and congressional race.

But in his acceptance speech, Kinch laid out the case that he plans to take to voters next year.

For most of his roughly 25-minute speech, Kinch offered a stinging indictment of what he called Brownback’s “radical conservative” policies on tax cuts, school finance, labor relations, the selection of state judges and the GOP’s refusal to expand Medicaid, as allowed under the federal Affordable Care Act. And he vowed that Democrats would work to reverse those policies, most notably by pushing for Medicaid expansion.

He also paid homage to a long list of moderate Republican officeholders over the last half-century or more, from former President Dwight Eisenhower to former Senate President Steve Morris and other moderates who were defeated by conservative challengers in GOP primaries in 2012.

“Accordingly, we will embrace the opportunity to work with moderate Republicans and unaffiliated voters toward that goal,” Kinch said.

Democrats in the Legislature, and others who have run unsuccessfully for public office, often have been divided over what strategy to use, whether to focus exclusively on criticizing Brownback and the conservatives, or whether they should be more forceful in offering their own, alternative agenda.

But Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, said the party chairman’s job isn’t to settle those kinds of differences.

“We have to pivot into (explaining), ‘This is how it could be different,'” Ward said. “Let us move together toward Medicaid expansion, funding public schools to a constitutional level, reinvesting in highways, and protecting higher education.”

Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, said he personally intends to begin laying out specific Democratic policy alternatives during the 2016 legislative session.

“I’ll be laying out what we should be doing tax-wise,” said Holland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Taxation Committee. “We should be repealing the Sam Brownback income tax cuts of 2012. We should be working to raise the minimum wage in this state. We should not be attacking state employee human rights in this state. And we should be working to fund the expansion of Medicaid based on the Affordable Care Act.”

Getting a new party chairman in place was also important because 2016 is a presidential election year and the party needs a chairman to sign off on its plan for selecting delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which will take place in Philadelphia in July.

Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, who chairs the delegate selection committee, said the plan is to hold caucuses in each state senate district on March 5. Each senate district is given a certain number of delegates it can send to the congressional district meetings April 2, and those congressional-level meetings will choose the delegates who go to the national convention.

Saturday’s meeting also provided a unique opportunity for some bipartisan camaraderie because standing in the back of the room while Kinch spoke was Clay Barker, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, who said he dropped by the meeting because he wanted to observe his competition in action.

Democrats in the theater gave him a polite and welcoming round of applause when his name was called out. And afterwards, Barker complimented Kinch for giving a “good speech,” thanked the Democrats for their hospitality and said he looked forward to the competition in 2016.

“Any group goes through periods of little mistakes,” Barker said of the confusion that erupted during the DemoFest convention in August. “I tell our people, don’t read anything into that. They’re motivated. They’re getting organized. They’re going to be effective.”