El Paso County Republican Party Chairman Jeff Hays likes to talk football and politics, but chances are that even the most detailed political discussion will soon start sounding like football.

“Everything in my life is a football analogy,” he said with a chuckle in a recent interview with The Colorado Statesman, and he wasn’t kidding.

“When I was at the Air Force Academy,” recalls Hays, who played football for the Falcons as a cadet and later taught and helped coach the team, “I was not very good our first years, but the last two years we won 18 games. That’s how you win is by sustained effort. The Republican Party is responsible for building that infrastructure, that logistic support and doing it.”

And it’s the success he’s had leading the GOP in the state’s largest county – not incidentally, also Colorado’s largest reserve of Republican votes – that has led him to the decision to run for state Republican Party chairman in a reorganization set for early spring. (State Republicans haven’t yet set a date for the meeting, party officials said.)

“We’ve been able to cast a vision of excellence, and we’ve been able to back that up with performance,” Hays said, pointing to record levels of Republican turnout in the past two general elections, as well as solid fundraising and data operations under his watch for two terms as chairman.

On Tuesday, Hays, 55, plans to announce his bid to become chairman. He will face at least one contender for the job, Jefferson County Republican George Athanosopoulos, who lost a race in November to unseat U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter. Steve House, the incumbent, has said he’ll announce whether he plans to seek a second term later this month, but Hays said he’s running no matter who else is in the contest.

“I don’t know there’s anybody in the state that has the relevant experience and the demonstrable performance that we’ve had in El Paso County,” Hays said, and then in the same breath offered another football analogy.

“As (former Air Force coach) Fisher DeBarry always used to tell us, ‘Men, you respect all and you fear none.’ They’re all fine people. It’s indicative of the relevance of the state party that people who have enthusiasm and people who have concern about the welfare of the state are willing to stick their neck out and run for a position like this,” Hays said, adding that he relishes the competition and counts House and recent former state chairs Ryan Call and Dick Wadhams as friends. “I have an innate level of respect for anybody willing to do this kind of work.”

But there’s no question, Hays said, that he believes he’s the candidate best suited to lead the state party.

“You’ve got to raise money, grow the party, win elections. They’re integrated – they all go together. If you don’t raise enough money, it’s miserable, you can’t do all the cool stuff you need to do,” he said. “You raise money by casting a vision, by having people get enthusiastic about what you’re trying to do, and, if they trust you, they’ll give.”

If that doesn’t sound enough like a football game, Hays added, “We need to carry that ball forward and keep that momentum going, working hard and establish personal relationships and trust. If you raise that money, you can do the things you have to do now instead of waiting until six months or six weeks before the election.”

Secretary of State Wayne Williams and Jefferson County GOP Chairman Don Ytterberg agree, placing themselves among dozens of initial endorsers supporting Hays’s candidacy. Other Hays backers include former Attorney General and Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, state Sens. Ray Scott, R-Grand Junction, and Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, state Reps. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, and Dan Nordberg, R-Colorado Springs, El Paso County Commissioner and former U.S. Senate candidate Peggy Littleton and former lawmakers Andy McElhany, Keith King and Amy Stephens.

The state Republican Central Committee will select party officers in March or April following county party reorganization meetings that kick off in February. The committee is made up of GOP elected officials, three officers from each county and an undetermined number of bonus members assigned to counties based on total votes for the top of the ticket in the last election – in this case, votes for President-elect Donald Trump. (A party official said last week that bonus member numbers should be available soon but are awaiting final precinct-level vote totals from the secretary of state’s office.)

After the November election, said Hays, who works as an associate with management consultants Booz Allen Hamilton, he was contemplating what his next step would be and decided to seek the chairmanship.

“We have to have 20/20 vision,” he said, “because we have to have an eye toward 2020 in everything we do,” referring to the upcoming U.S. Census and resulting reapportionment to draw legislative boundaries for the next decade. “We need to reapportion according to the Constitution, not according to the whims of one party,” he added. “I’m running because we’ve got to win, to make Colorado great again, to turn this place red.”

It’s similar to the notes struck by House during his insurgent campaign for chairman two years ago, when he unseated Call. Republicans, who held sway in the Legislature for decades, have struggled to win majorities in either chamber since the turn of the century, and GOP leaders say it’s critical to hold the reins of power ahead of redistricting and reapportionment to have a shot going forward.

House also campaigned on a promise to examine and possibly dismantle the state GOP’s independent expenditure committee, but two years later the organization – formed by Call to raise money and support Republicans in state races – is still around, and Hays said he thinks that’s a good thing.

“I think we need to support the IEC,” he said. “It’s a leveler. It allows the organization to raise money in ways that exceed the restrictive campaign finance we have now.”

Quoting Winston Churchill – in his lone departure from a football reference – Hays added that the IEC, is filled with potential.

“What good is a newborn baby? It’s a fairly radical concept, and there are people not really sure what it is or what it does,” he said.

As far as Propositions 107 and 108, statewide ballot measures passed by voters in November to establish presidential primaries and open up partisan primaries to unaffiliated voters, Hays said he’s considering how the party should proceed. (Some Republicans are urging that the party take advantage of a provision that would allow the party to opt out of open primary law so that unaffiliated voters would have to become Republicans to vote in the GOP primary.)

Noting that he opposed both measures, Hays said now that they’re on the books, the GOP should “thoughtfully consider the consequences. There are opportunities in place. I don’t look at this as a crisis. We need to have thoughtful discussions as a Republican Party.” Some Republicans, he said, contend, “We only need to have Republicans, others say it’s political suicide if we exclude the unaffiliated voters.”

Likewise, he said he’s open to exploring options about whether to proceed with caucuses or doing away with them in favor of other ways of gaining access to the primary ballot.

“I came out as a critic of our caucus and assembly processes,” Hays noted. “We’ve got some concerns with – I hate to use the word, but, not ‘disenfranchisement,’ but it is – if you can’t physically attend the caucus you can’t participate.” He said he’d like to examine potential tweaks to allow more voters to participate. “If we can fix some of the internal processes, I’d be fine with pushing forward with both systems,” he said, adding, “There’s not a perfect system, let me put it that way.”

Regardless, Hays said, “The party’s job is to run a fair and unbiased process for gaining access to the general election ballot and then carry those candidates to victory. If the field’s level and it’s fairly officiated, then most likely the best man or woman will win the race. If we create a fair system, the system will work.”

Potentially, Hays suggested, the party could look at ranked selections, allowing voters to choose first, second and third choices in a primary.

Hays said it was critical that the state party puts together a robust information and data structure and make that available to candidates, as well as open up the technology to all 64 counties.

“The party needs to be a purveyor of those systems in a more effective way,” he said, noting that he set up an operation that accomplished that in El Paso County. “It’s something I would like to recreate at the state level, and I know how to do it. It’s the difference between program management and individual project management. When you act as a team, you can get good things done like that. That’s a role of the state party to make sure the team pulls together.”

“I’m a big believer in what (former Air Force Academy coach) Ken Hatfield said when we were going to our first bowl game in 1982,” Hays said, noting that the legendary coach hailed from Arkansas. “‘Men, you gotta stick to your knittin’.” In other words, Hays translated, “Don’t get involved in all the hoopla – do your job and we’ll win.”