With the arrival of the New Deal, Hays was appointed as a labor compliance officer for the National Recovery Administration in Arkansas in 1934.

In 1953, Hays sponsored House Resolution 60, to create within the Capitol building, "a place of retreat as an encouragement to prayer."

This followed a trend of religious legislation which had manifested the previous year in the establishment of the National Day of Prayer, and would continue in following years with the insertion of the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance (1954), and the addition of "In God We Trust" to the national currency (1955).

Hays, whom The Washington Post's Drew Pearson described in a June 20, 1954, column as "one of the foremost experts in psychological warfare against communism," used his evangelical connections to help build a Christian conservative consensus in favor of the aggressive internationalism The Family called "Militant Liberty," an approach favored by internationalist Republicans and conservative Democrats.

Then, with just a week to go before the November election, Dale Alford, a member of the Little Rock school board, launched a write-in bid against Hays.

[3][4][5] From 1959 to 1961, after his congressional tenure had ended, Hays served on the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

In 1970 he was elected as co-chairman of Former Members of Congress, Inc. and served as the chairman of the Government Good Neighbor Council of North Carolina.

Hays finished third, ahead of the man who had defeated him as a write-in candidate in 1958, Dale Alford, but behind Frank Holt and "Justice Jim" Johnson.

Johnson, the eventual party nominee, a former Arkansas Supreme Court justice from Conway and avowed segregationist, was defeated in the November general election by the Republican Winthrop Rockefeller of Morrilton.