A 29-year-old democratic socialist is giving U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette her biggest challenge in the 30 years since she was first elected to represent Denver, appearing on the verge of pushing Colorado’s longest serving member of Congress out of Washington.
Melat Kiros, who was endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders last week, has tapped into the national discontent among Democratic voters toward incumbents and parlayed her social media savviness into a campaign that at the very least has DeGette’s supporters incredibly nervous.
Polling shows the race is neck and neck, including a survey conducted by Kiros’ backers that indicates she may even be in the lead. Millions of last-minute dollars have flowed into Colorado’s 1st Congressional District to try to protect DeGette, who is facing two primary challengers — Kiros and University of Colorado Regent Wanda James.
And at a recent debate, the congresswoman seemed to be up against the ropes, fiercely defending her record and going on the offensive against Kiros, a former lawyer and graduate student who is running for office for the first time.
“Now is not the time to gamble and send somebody with no experience to Washington,” DeGette said.
Kiros is part of a nationwide movement of younger Democrats who are taking on older, more establishment party leaders. She’s hoping to follow the lead of Democratic candidates in New York who ousted two incumbents in primary elections this week with backing from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The candidates ran left of their opponents, focusing on economic injustice and their opposition to U.S. support of Israel in its war against Hamas.
Like those races in New York, Israel is a central issue in the 1st District primary. Beyond that, Kiros and DeGette are aligned on most policies, like their shared support for Medicare for All and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But the race comes at a time when incumbents are vulnerable and voters are looking for change due to fears about the economy, anger over President Donald Trump’s policies and general “angst and anxiety,” Democratic strategist Steve Welchert said.
“That is a perfect storm that could be a harbinger of a tough Tuesday,” he said of DeGette’s prospects.
However, he said the fact that voters who dislike DeGette can choose between two alternatives may help protect the congresswoman, even if James doesn’t appear to have a path to victory.
How we got here
DeGette, 68, was first elected to Congress in 1996, when she beat former Denver City Council member Tim Sandos in the Democratic primary. She won that race by 12 percentage points and the general election by 17 points.
Since then, she has never come close to losing her seat in a primary, let alone a general election, in the 1st District, a Democratic stronghold that hasn’t elected a Republican since 1970.
DeGette, who is in her 15th term, faced her last primary challenge in 2022, when she beat Neal Walia by 62 percentage points.
This year, DeGette entered the heart of primary season seeking to get her name on the primary ballot through Colorado’s famously risky caucus and assembly process, instead of gathering signatures. She was approaching this year’s primary challenge as she had the ones in years past.
But it ended up being a wake-up call.
DeGette needed support from 30% of the delegates at the Democratic assembly in the 1st District to get her name on the ballot. She narrowly crossed the bar, receiving about 33%, coming in second to Kiros in the two-way race. (James gathered voter signatures to make the ballot.)
Only 235 delegates cast ballots in the assembly, compared with the roughly 465,000 voters eligible to vote in the Democratic primary this year in the 1st District. Publicly, DeGette and her supporters mostly brushed it off.
“I am eager to return to Congress,” she told Denverite in a statement.
People close to the congresswoman say she understood the warning sign. Behind the scenes, DeGette’s campaign responded by purchasing ad time earlier than usual, touting her liberal bona fides by sharing video of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, praising DeGette’s work on Medicare for All.
But it wasn’t enough to keep support for Kiros from building, which peaked last week with Sanders’ endorsement.
DeGette’s supporters responded to try to reverse the momentum in the eleventh hour. A trio of super PACs spent $1.3 million recently, mostly on ads against Kiros, including one repeating an attack from DeGette’s campaign that Kiros “recently moved to Denver” — a claim that ignores the fact she lived in Denver as a child before moving to the suburbs.
Kiros, who emigrated to the United States from Ethiopia before she was a year old, moved back to Colorado after losing her job as a lawyer at a prominent law firm after writing an open letter criticizing the claim that calling for the elimination of Israel is antisemitic.
The ad also accused Kiros of making statements “laced with antisemitism.”
Kiros, who most recently worked as a barista while studying for a doctorate in public policy, has faced criticism from Colorado’s Jewish community for her comments about Israel. In May, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Colorado released an open letter accusing her of reinforcing “many of the same reductive and dehumanizing dynamics that are making many Jews feel increasingly unsafe and alienated.”
This week, in an interview on 9News, Kiros declined to call the deadly firebombing of a group of Jewish demonstrators in Boulder, who were calling for the release of hostages taken by Hamas, an act of antisemitism.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” she said. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people.”
In that same interview, Kiros was asked about her comments that the Oct. 7, 2023, attack Hamas perpetrated on Israel. Kiros said the attack, which left about 1,200 mostly civilians dead, was an “inevitable consequence.” Asked whether she felt the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were inevitable, too, she said yes.
“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” Kiros said.
DeGette’s campaign put out an ad highlighting Kiros’ response. Additionally, the congresswoman said in a statement that she was “shocked and disgusted” by Kiros’ comments.
“9/11 wasn’t inevitable — it was an act of terror that killed thousands of Americans. Denver deserves a representative who stands with the victims, not one who rationalizes their deaths,” DeGette said in the statement.
Kiros’ supporters, including the PACs Justice Democrats and American Priorities, have purchased TV ad time in the lead-up to the June 30 primary to combat groups buying airtime in support of DeGette.
American Priorities, a group that has vowed to counter pro-Israel money in Democratic primaries, purchased about $140,000 in airtime on Denver TV channels though election day.
The candidates are mostly aligned on policy
The biggest area in which DeGette and Kiros differ is Israel.
DeGette has called for a two-state solution while Kiros wants the country to no longer be a Jewish state, saying it currently operates as an ethnocracy.
“I will always advocate for equal rights and equal protection under the law for everyone, everywhere, with no one’s safety or freedom rationed by their faith or ethnicity,” Kiros said in a written statement.
Kiros wants an embargo on all arms sales to Israel, while DeGette suggested she would back a prohibition on everything but defensive weapons.
But otherwise, Kiros and DeGette are aligned on most other policies.
DeGette is a liberal Democrat herself: She’s a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus with a track record of supporting issues like abortion rights and environmental justice.
At a debate last week with DeGette and James, Kiros acknowledged that she and DeGette actually agree on many issues — such as Medicare for All and universal childcare.
But for Kiros, DeGette’s support for those issues is undercut by her acceptance of campaign contributions from industries that Kiros says stand to be hurt by the passage of such legislation.
“Until we have Democrats that aren’t taking money from the same corporations and billionaires that don’t want those things to pass we will never see those policies come to fruition,” Kiros said at the June 19 forum. “So we have to call a spade a spade, and we have to call out the Democrats who are in bed with these same special interests.”
DeGette rejects the argument that accepting such contributions compromises her ability to push for policies she believes in.
At the event, she pointed out that she backed having the Department of Health and Human Services negotiate prescription drug prices over the objections of the pharmaceutical companies.
“Nobody ever gave me a contribution and got anything in advance for that. And if people think that they can buy my vote by making a contribution, they are sorely, sorely mistaken,” she said.
DeGette added: “I am not bought and I am not sold.”
Trump has also come up as a central theme in the race.
With Democrats hoping to take control of the U.S. House during the second half of the Trump administration, DeGette is stressing that she is the best person to represent Denver.
She pitched her long tenure in Washington as an asset since it guarantees her membership on key committees. DeGette said she would use her senior position to pass Medicare for All, reverse Medicaid cuts and fight to bring resources to Denver for housing.
“I have the power and ability to do that,” she said at the forum.
As the cochair of the Reproductive Freedom Caucus, DeGette said she also would pass a bill in the first week to restore abortion rights across the country.
“We need a strong, bold, hardened leader who will hold Trump accountable and, when we win the majority in November, will have real power to move the U.S. to a more just and affordable America,” she said.
But Kiros sees Trump as a symptom of the problem.
“Trump is not the cause, he’s a symptom of a system that is broken and has been broken for a really long time because our party has failed to understand the role that they need to play in getting money out of our politics,” she said.
Tapping into a national movement
Walia, who lost to DeGette in the 2022 primary, thinks Kiros is the strongest challenger DeGette has faced in her three decades in Washington, in large part because she has joined forces with a national progressive movement trying to keep corporate money out of politics.
He senses the same kind of energy that helped Mamdani become New York’s mayor is now behind Kiros.
“She and her team now are part of something bigger than the race for Congressional District 1,” said Walia, who is now running for a statehouse seat.
He thinks many younger progressive voters have become frustrated with a Democratic Party they see as “stale.”
Shanna Finch, 38, is one of them.
A Sanders supporter who had become disillusioned with politics, Finch was inspired by Mamdani’s victory to join the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, feeling like she needed to take action to oppose Trump.
Now Finch, who owns a convenience store with her mother and brother and just bought a small house, has been going door to door to urge people to vote for Kiros.
Finch said she doesn’t like to treat political candidates as heroes or celebrities, just people who will stick to their principles and listen to voters. She sees Kiros, a renter, as a regular person who understands what it’s like to live in an expensive city.
“It’s nice to have someone I’m excited about,” Finch said.