The Col­orado House GOP cau­cus elect­ed a new leader Mon­day amid a grow­ing divide among the state’s Repub­li­cans about find­ing a new strat­e­gy to help Repub­li­cans win seats in a leg­is­la­ture that is con­trolled by Democrats.

Repub­li­cans have 24 seats in the House to Democ­rats’ 41, main­tain­ing the same make­up as last year, after tough bat­tles to defend swing seats.

After two rounds of vot­ing, Rep. Hugh McK­ean of Love­land was select­ed as House minor­i­ty leader, his sup­port­ers cit­ing a need for change and lead­er­ship that under­stands each district’s needs are unique. McK­ean replaces Rep. Patrick Neville of Cas­tle Rock, who decid­ed not to seek anoth­er term in lead­er­ship fol­low­ing an inter­nal bat­tle about the cau­cus’ priorities.

The pow­er strug­gle was evi­dent as two peo­ple chal­lenged McK­ean for the seat, includ­ing the assis­tant minor­i­ty leader, Rep. Kevin Van Win­kle of High­lands Ranch, and Rep. Tim Geit­ner of Fal­con. Rep. Dave Williams of Col­orado Springs turned down a nom­i­na­tion for assis­tant minor­i­ty leader after McK­ean won the top post, cit­ing their dif­fer­ent views.

But McK­ean said he wants to bring the cau­cus togeth­er and would lis­ten to all opin­ions as the mem­bers craft a vision for the new year.

“I don’t think we put enough empha­sis on how we win when we talk about the work we do away from elec­tions,” McK­ean said.

He called the cau­cus “intel­lec­tu­al­ly diverse” and said the work mov­ing for­ward needs to focus on how to assist indi­vid­ual mem­bers in best rep­re­sent­ing their own districts.

“They’re your con­stituents. They are the ones that elect­ed you,” he said. “It mat­ters not what any one of the rest of us say about how we think that peo­ple should be aligned on an issue.”

Williams said he would keep an open mind, but that he “fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­agrees” with McKean’s approach to being more col­lab­o­ra­tive with Democ­rats and his vision for the caucus.

“I think the rea­son we’re los­ing elec­tions is because the vot­ers are being tricked and deceived by Democ­rats, and we need to do every­thing we can to expose that decep­tion,” he said.

After los­ing the minor­i­ty leader seat, Geit­ner — backed by Williams — was elect­ed the assis­tant minor­i­ty leader. Rep. Rod Pel­ton of Cheyenne Wells was select­ed as the House minor­i­ty whip; Rep. Jan­ice Rich of Grand Junc­tion was elect­ed as cau­cus chair; and Rep. Kim Ran­som of Lone Tree was reelect­ed to the Joint Bud­get Committee.

House Democ­rats elect­ed their lead­er­ship last week as did Sen­ate Democ­rats and Republicans.