Lakewood repeal volunteers canvass through Easter as vote becomes Front Range bellwether

LAKEWOOD — With five days until ballots are due in Lakewood’s April 7 special election, volunteers for the Lakewood Citizens Alliance are not taking Easter weekend off. They are knocking doors.

“Canvassers are like, when are we stopping canvassing?” Karen Gordey, who leads the grassroots repeal effort, said on The Kim Monson Show. “Given the fact that not everybody has their ballots in hand yet, we’re going to canvass all the way up through the Saturday of Easter weekend.”

The mail-ballot-only election asks voters four questions about whether to repeal a sweeping zoning code overhaul the Lakewood City Council approved in October 2025. A “yes” vote repeals the upzoning ordinances and returns the city to its pre-2025 zoning. A “no” vote keeps the new rules in place. All ballots must be in drop boxes by 7 p.m. on April 7.

Both sides agree the stakes extend beyond Lakewood

Gordey framed the election in regional terms. “If Lakewood goes, the whole Front Range goes,” she told The Kim Monson Show. “So this is super important that we get everybody out voting yes against to repeal the radical zoning.”

The claim goes beyond campaign rhetoric. Robert Adams, a paid campaign coordinator for Make Lakewood Livable, the issue committee backing the rezoning, made a strikingly similar argument in a Westword opinion piece. “What is happening in Lakewood will set the tone in many other cities taking up zoning reform, including Denver,” Adams wrote. The piece disclosed that Adams is a paid coordinator for the pro-zoning campaign.

Both sides agree: what Lakewood decides on April 7 sets the template for zoning fights across the Front Range.

A fight over who counts as grassroots

The rhetorical battle in the final week has centered on credibility. Gordey said flyers from the opposition have accused the Lakewood Citizens Alliance of being a “special interest group” funded by “dark money.”

“A hundred percent, we’re not stopping,” Gordey said. “We’re determined. We want to get the word out. We know the other side is playing dirty with the verbiage and accusing us of being special interests.”

The alliance describes itself on its homepage as a movement “started by local residents,” with no paid political consultants, no institutional donors, and no industry backing. It explicitly contrasts itself against “national or state advocacy groups parachuting into local issues.”

That contrast carries a pointed subtext. As KMS previously reported, the single largest contribution in the election came from Action Now Initiative, a Houston-based 501(c)(4) tied to billionaire John Arnold, which gave $75,000 to Keep Lakewood Moving Forward, a committee supporting the rezoning. Pro-rezoning forces have outraised repeal supporters by a 5-to-1 margin.

The transparency page

Rather than simply dispute the accusations, the Lakewood Citizens Alliance built a financial transparency page on its website showing donation breakdowns through March 6.

“While anybody can pull up the campaign finance reports, most people don’t know how to,” Gordey said on The Kim Monson Show. “And so we created a financial transparency page through March the 6th that shows the donations for our issues committee as well as the opponent’s issues committee broken out by outside of Lakewood, inside of Lakewood, and businesses.”

The page allows voters to compare the funding sources side by side without navigating the city’s formal campaign finance portal. For a volunteer-run group being outspent 5-to-1 by committees backed by out-of-state money, the transparency page doubles as an answer to the “dark money” accusation and a spotlight on where the opposition’s money actually comes from.

The ground game in final days

The canvassing push reflects practical urgency as much as political determination. The city mailed ballots to active registered voters between March 16 and March 20, but Gordey noted that not all voters had received their ballots by the time canvassing ramped up. March 30 was the last day to request a mailed ballot. Voters who have not yet received one can register and pick up a ballot in person on April 7, the final day.

The special election costs the city $155,000, according to the Denver Gazette. Lakewood’s City Charter required the vote be held 30 to 90 days after petition sufficiency was certified, which precluded waiting for the November general election.

City Council has not remained neutral. The council passed Resolution R-2026-14 urging voters to keep the zoning changes, and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet endorsed the anti-repeal side. Make Lakewood Livable’s campaign manager, Sophia Mayott-Guerrero, is a former City Council member.

What is on the ballot

The four ordinances under review collectively rewrote Lakewood’s zoning code in a nearly 400-page document that took effect at the beginning of the year. Ordinance 2025-29 replaced the term “single-family zoning” with “residential dwellings,” a category encompassing single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes, and townhomes. Ordinance 2025-27 eliminated parking minimums for residences in transit corridors and affordable housing developments. Ordinances 2025-28 and 2025-30 addressed procedures, use standards, and the zoning map.

Supporters of the zoning changes say half of Lakewood residents are cost-burdened, spending more than a third of their income on housing, and that the reforms are necessary to expand housing options. Opponents argue the changes benefit investors and corporate buyers rather than working families.

Cathy Kentner, an organizer with Lakewood for All, told CBS Colorado that the new zoning “pushes working-class people into what is often referred to as permanent rentership.”

With Easter Sunday falling on April 5 and the deadline two days later, both sides are counting on turnout in the final stretch. For Gordey’s canvassers, the holiday weekend is the last chance to reach voters before the drop boxes close.