the church responded by endorsing its own candidate; lawyer josé joaquín rodríguez zeledón of the democratic constitutional party. the liberals, including soto's government, endorsed ascensión esquivel ibarra from the "olympus" group, a group of intellectual aristocrats nicknamed as such because of their elitism. soto went even as far as to allow esquivel to run the presidency for a while. the constitutional party identify itself by using the national pavilion, whilst the liberal progressive party used a red flag, the traditional color of the liberals in latin america. during the campaign rodríguez was accused of trying to impose a religious government (despite the fact that he publicly endorsed the need for church-state separation) whilst esquivel was signaled for freemason, liberal and nicaraguan.