{"id":863,"date":"2026-07-01T11:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=863"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:38:11","slug":"left-wing-challenger-melat-kiros-upsets-15-term-incumbent-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=863","title":{"rendered":"Left-Wing Challenger Melat Kiros Upsets 15-Term Incumbent in Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Melat<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Melat Kiros, a<\/span> 29-year-old democratic socialist, has won the high-profile primary for Colorado\u2019s first congressional district, the Associated Press and other outlets projected Tuesday. With more than 90 percent of votes counted, Kiros leads Diana DeGette, Colorado\u2019s longest-serving Democratic member of Congress, by a comfortable 51-42 margin.<\/p>

Read more The Supreme Court\u2019s Trans Athlete Ruling Is a Threat to Gender Equality<\/a><\/p>\n

DeGette\u2014who has held her position since before Kiros was born\u2014was seeking a 16th term in the House. She leads Colorado\u2019s congressional delegation.<\/p>\n

I covered Kiros\u2019 outsider challenge to DeGette as part of a wave of young congressional candidates running in part to challenge the Democratic establishment on Gaza:<\/p>\n

\n

And in a primary taking place Tuesday in Denver, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist who calls herself a \u201crecovering lawyer,\u201d is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette, who has held her seat since 1997.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, as a new lawyer in New York, Kiros wrote\u00a0an open letter\u00a0defending law students who organized for Palestine. \u201cI myself am from the northern region of Ethiopia, where a genocide had also taken place a few years ago,\u201d Kiros, whose parents immigrated to Colorado when she was a baby, said.<\/p>\n

Her employer asked her to take the letter down. Kiros refused, was fired, and moved back to Colorado within a week. She took a gig as a barista (\u201cthe best job I\u2019ve had\u201d) to make ends meet, and is now running on a familiar progressive platform: Medicare for All, universal childcare, AI regulation, ICE abolition and an arms embargo on Israel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The only poll in the race, by progressive firm Data For Progress, showed Kiros up by five points earlier in June.<\/p>

Read more Tom Kean Jr. Sought Help for Depression. He Hasn\u2019t Made It Easy for Others To Do the Same.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single thing that you care about, from social justice to economic justice to environmental justice, all of these things are intertwined with who has the money and the influence to wield power over our government,\u201d Kiros said to me in an interview June 10.<\/p>\n

In the final weeks of Kiros\u2019 race, millions of dollars flooded in to support DeGette. The largest outside group spending on DeGette\u2019s behalf, Pro-Choice Majority Action, has ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. The biggest spender backing Kiros has been the super PAC of the progressive group Justice Democrats, which endorsed her in December.<\/p>\n

Kiros is also backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and high-profile supporters like Bernie Sanders and streamer Hasan Piker, who was urging voters to get to the polls in Denver minutes before they closed. (\u201cWhat do you guys think about the data center that just popped up over here?\u201d Piker told audiences. \u201cDiana DeGette, who\u2019s represented this district for 30 years in Congress, is saying nothing about the data centers, because she\u2019s in the pocket of big corporations.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Kiros will join a group of left-wing insurgent candidates who have upset the Democratic establishment by winning decisive primary victories on unapologetically progressive platforms. Only half an hour after polls closed, with the race not yet called, Republicans were already treating Kiros as the presumptive winner. Democrats are \u201cshowing their true colors and saying we want socialism, inevitably we want communism,\u201d said Republican Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert on Colorado\u2019s News9. \u201cYou\u2019re seeing this in New York\u2014you have the Mamdani allies, who won their candidacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two politicians aligned with Mamdani\u2014former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier\u2014knocked out incumbents; a third, Claire Valdez, will replace retiring Democratic veteran Nydia Vel\u00e1zquez.<\/p>\n

Kiros says she will work with them to push the Democratic Party leftward. \u201cIf enough of us share that commitment to Medicare for All, to ending corporate capture, to an arms embargo [on Israel], we should absolutely say: here are our conditions,\u201d she told Axios. \u201cIf you want our votes on leadership, on appropriations, this is what it costs.\u201d<\/p>

Read more The Roberts Court Knocks Down One of the Last Campaign Finance Rules<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kiros ousts Rep. Diana DeGette, who entered Congress before her rival was born.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nLeft-Wing Challenger Melat Kiros Upsets 15-Term Incumbent in Colorado - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=863\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Left-Wing Challenger Melat Kiros Upsets 15-Term Incumbent in Colorado - Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kiros ousts Rep. 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