President Donald Trump’s Colorado campaign team threw its weight behind El Paso County Republican Party Chairman Jeff Hays on Wednesday in the race for state GOP chair.

But Hays’s opponent, former congressional candidate George Athanasopoulos, was having none of it, calling the endorsement “preposterous” and predicting the move could backfire among the grassroots Republicans supporting his bid.

In an email sent to Republicans Wednesday evening, state Trump campaign co-chair Bob Balink called Hays “a loyal and dependable ‘deplorable'” and praised the county party’s work turning out voters in record numbers in the November election.

“The Colorado Trump Team supports Jeff Hays for Colorado GOP Chairman, our preferred candidate,” Balink writes. He then asks Republicans to support Hays at the upcoming state GOP central committee meeting – the election takes place Saturday, April 1, at Englewood High School – and goes on to describe Hays and point to his campaign website.

Posting the email on social media, Hays wrote that he was “honored” to receive the support and thanked Balink and the rest of the Trump campaign for their hard work.

“We’re going to make Colorado red again in 2018, we’re going to win, and we’re going to have fun!” Hays wrote.

Athanasopoulos, however, wasn’t impressed.

“The idea that Jeff Hays would be the candidate who stands for Donald Trump and his supporters is so preposterous as to be ridiculous,” he told The Colorado Statesman. “Jeff Hays and his supporters represent what the Republican Party used to be. They represent exactly the party that Donald Trump had to defeat on his way to becoming president.”

Noting that he was the first federal candidate in Colorado – and among the first higher profile Republicans in the state – to endorse Trump, Athanasopoulos said he wondered whether Republican activists would find it credible that Hays deserved the Trump mantle.

“I endorsed Donald Trump on June 8, the day after the California primary and the day Gov. John Hickenlooper and all the Democrats held a rally on the steps of the state Capitol to denounce Trump as a racist,” he said. “I didn’t see any other Republicans. That day, I learned what it was to be a lonely Republican. To think that Jeff Hays is going to advertise himself as the Trump candidate is laughably false.”

Athanasopoulos shook his head and made a derisive noise.

“This is their hail Mary,” he said, “because they know they’re losing among the grassroots.”

The race for the top party spot has been heating up in recent weeks as county Republican parties meet to elect officers and bonus members to the state central committee. Hays and Athanasopoulos are the only two candidates for state chair, an open seat after current chair Steve House said last month he wouldn’t seek another term. (Incumbent party secretary Brandi Meek is unopposed seeking a second term, and Colorado Springs organizer Sherrie Gibson is the only announced candidate for vice chair.)

A top Republican strategist said not to be surprised if the White House gets involved in the intraparty race as the election approaches, pointing out that the president-elect weighed in on Ohio’s GOP leadership contest last month. Trump himself called a dozen Republican officials in a successful attempt to oust the incumbent state GOP chairman, according to news reports, and also recorded robocalls that went out to the central committee membership.

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com