As if we needed a reminder that April 1 is right around the corner – not that April 1, silly; the election for GOP chair – the leading candidates are now giving it their best shot. Kind of like the end of a fireworks show.

Hence, a mass email this morning from Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams reminding fellow Republicans – and particularly the state Central Committee members who will be voting – why he has endorsed outgoing El Paso County Republican Chair Jeff Hays for the top state party post. (Yes, Williams took care not to use official e-letterhead.) The Hays campaign distributed that one far and wide on the heels of several other endorsement letters it has shared publicly in recent days, including from members of the General Assembly.

Meanwhile, Hays’s chief rival in the race, unsuccessful 2016 7th Congressional District candidate George Athanasopoulos, laid down a different sort of marker this week, penning a commentary in the Colorado Statesman calling for Republicans to delay implementation of Proposition 108, approved by state voters last Nov. 8. The measure opens Republican and Democratic party primaries to unaffiliated voters – fully one-third of the electorate in Colorado – without making them join one of the parties as the law currently requires. Athanasopoulos promises if elected chair, he will push the legislature to delay the ballot measure’s implementation, and if lawmakers fall short, he’ll sue to stop it.

Athanasopoulos, of Golden, has endeavored to cast Hays, of Colorado Springs, as the establishment candidate anointed by the state’s traditional GOP hierarchy. Hays doesn’t seem to take the bait and keeps cranking out endorsements from prominent Republicans, establishment or otherwise. Both candidates – naturally – tout their own support for Donald Trump while each questions the bona fides of the other in that regard.

Alongside all of this, there is a third declared candidate in the running, Mesa County Trump campaign Chair Kevin McCarney. McCarney says what prompted him to jump into the race was what he felt was missing: a specific agenda for getting the state party back at the top of its game. His plan for doing just that, he said today, is on his website.

Current state GOP chair Steve House announced in January he is not seeking another term.