Two G.J. City Council members who voted against fireworks ban took campaign donations from country’s largest fireworks distributor

On May 6, 2026, Grand Junction City Council voted 4-3 to adopt Resolution 39-26 banning the sale of fireworks in the City temporarily due to the extreme drought creating conditions favorable to the spread of wildfires. In the resolution, Council noted that just so far this year, more than 660,000 acres have burned in Colorado’s wild land urban interface,  a 900% increase over 2025. Council proposed the fireworks ban to protect City residents and businesses from being ravaged by destructive wildfires, like the incredibly destructive Marshall Fire on the front range in December of 2021.

Council members voting for the fireworks ban were Laurel Lutz (formerly Cole), Jason Nguyen, Anna Stout and Scott Bielfuss. Council members who voted against the ban were Ben Van Dyke, Robert Ballard and Cody Kennedy.

Two of the three council members who voted against the fireworks ban, Robert Ballard and Cody Kennedy, were found to have accepted campaign donations from TNT Fireworks, the biggest fireworks distributor in the country, while running for Council in 2025.

TNT Fireworks is based in Florence, Alabama and has an annual revenue of $126.5 million. It’s not a Colorado company.

Robert Ballard’s second campaign finance report covering dates from 3/27/25 to 4/4/25 shows Ballard accepted a $250 donation from Carson Anderson, the Managing Director of TNT Fireworks, on 3/27/25.

Kennedy’ second campaign finance report covering the period from 3/18/25 to 4/4/25 shows that he, too accepted a $250 donation from Carson Anderson and TNT Fireworks on 3/31/25.

While Ben Van Dyke voted along with Ballard and Kennedy in opposing the fireworks ban, no donations from TNT Fireworks or Carson Anderson were listed in his campaign finance reports, but a donation that exactly matched the amount that TNT Fireworks had given both Ballard and Kennedy — $250 — came from a Nick Faraci of Denver. Nick Faraci appears to be the 20-something year-old son of long time Denver lobbyist Christena Faraci. Nick Faraci’s address is listed as 242 S. Forest Street in Denver, a home valued at $1.17 million and listed as belonging to Christena and Paul Faraci. Nick Faraci put down that he is employed as a “warehouse associate” at “The Feed,” a large Broomfield-based e-commerce seller of sports nutrition, gear and supplements. Warehouse associates at The Feed earn $19-22 an hour, depending on the shift, and the company solicits high school students to fill its warehouse jobs.

This leads us to believe that Christena Faraci may have tried to disguise a campaign donation to Ben Van Dyke from TNT by portraying it as coming from her son, making it harder to trace. We were unable to discover any proof that TNT Fireworks is in fact a lobbying client of Christena Faraci, since she does not appear to be currently registered with the state as a lobbyist, which would require her to publicly disclose who her clients are. But the scenario would plausibly explain why a 20-something kid in Denver who apparently lives with his parents and is scraping by at a job that pays about $19 an hour would suddenly decide to make a $250 campaign donation to a first-time city council candidate in a small western slope town clear across the state.