A 29-year-old Democratic Socialists of America member who wants to abolish ICE, end U.S. aid to Israel, and install single-payer health care has just knocked off a 15-term Democratic congresswoman in Colorado, and she is almost certainly headed to Washington.
Melat Kiros defeated Rep. Diana DeGette in Tuesday's Democratic primary in Colorado's 1st Congressional District, taking 49.3 percent of the vote to DeGette's 43.5 percent. The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday night. DeGette, 68, first won the Denver-area seat in 1997, before Kiros was born.
The Cook Political Report rates Colorado's 1st District as solidly Democratic. The Washington Free Beacon noted the district has not elected a Republican representative in more than 50 years. That means Kiros's primary victory is, for all practical purposes, her ticket to Congress.
Kiros's win did not arrive in isolation. Earlier in the month, DSA-aligned candidates swept primaries in New York City. Former DSA member Brad Lander topped House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries's preferred candidate, Rep. Dan Goldman. Current DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated another Jeffries-backed incumbent, Rep. Adriano Espaillat. And DSA member Claire Valdez won the primary for the seat of retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez, beating establishment-aligned opponents. All three were backed by New York City's democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose slate swept those primaries in a single night.
Now the same energy has crossed the Rocky Mountains. House Speaker Mike Johnson framed the trend bluntly. Breitbart reported Johnson's assessment:
"Marxists, socialists, and the insurgent far-left have taken over the Democratic Party."
That is a political opponent's characterization, not a neutral finding. But the primary results make it harder to dismiss. Establishment Democrats are losing to DSA-backed challengers in deep-blue districts from Manhattan to Denver, and party leadership has offered little beyond shrugs in response.
Jeffries told reporters Monday, the day before DeGette's loss, that the incumbent was "forcefully making her case" for re-election, then added, "We'll see what happens." He later told CBS News that "it's not a surprise that there are highly competitive primaries in deep blue parts of the country that are also unfolding this cycle," and blamed President Trump for creating an "unsettled electoral environment." After the New York results, Jeffries told Mamdani he "has got work to do", but the work appears to be going the other direction.
Kiros is an Ethiopia-born Ph.D. student and former attorney. She worked at the New York office of Sidley Austin, a major law firm, until she was fired after writing an open letter arguing that calling for the elimination of Israel is not antisemitic. The letter went viral in the weeks following Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
National Review reported Kiros's own account of the firing:
"I was asked to take the letter down. I said no, and then I was fired."
In an interview with left-wing podcaster Hasan Piker, Kiros described Hamas's October 7 massacre as an "inevitable consequence" of Israel's actions. She listed her top five policy priorities as "Medicare for all. Housing first. Universal child care. Abolishing ICE. And more than anything... publicly financed elections."
Her comments did not stop at October 7. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Kiros also called the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "inevitable," saying they were:
"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."
And in June 2025, when a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, was firebombed, Kiros refused to call the attack antisemitic. DeGette responded on Facebook, as Fox News reported:
"I'm shocked and disgusted that Kiros is doubling down on excusing terrorism and the murder of innocent people."
None of it was enough to save DeGette's seat.
DeGette entered the race with every institutional advantage a 28-year incumbent could want. She carried endorsements from Colorado's Democratic congressional delegation, the House Progressive Caucus, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and several prominent labor unions. At a candidate forum last week, she warned voters directly:
"Now is not the time to gamble and send somebody with no experience to Washington."
She also cast herself as the candidate best positioned to oppose the current administration, saying, "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 US to a more just and affordable America... That leader is me."
The voters disagreed. National Review noted that DeGette barely qualified for the primary ballot in the first place, receiving only 33 percent support at the March Democratic convention, just above the 30 percent threshold required to appear on the ballot. That alone should have been a warning sign for Democratic leadership. It apparently was not.
Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman has already torn into his own party over the socialist primary wave, and other establishment Democrats have gone conspicuously quiet. DeGette herself did not speak or release a statement after the AP called the race, AP News reported.
Kiros was not quiet. AP News quoted her declaring:
"We are winning from coast to coast. We are taking back our party and our country!"
She added: "This is a movement. We are just getting started."
The DSA echoed that confidence on social media. Fox News reported the organization posted, "Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West", a boast that looks less like bluster after Tuesday's results. And the DSA has already issued "you're next" warnings aimed at Jeffries and other establishment figures.
At a candidate forum, Kiros laid out the rationale that powered her campaign:
"The reality is Democrats have the worst approval rating we've had in decades, because we've failed to actually do anything for working people."
She continued: "In order for the Democratic Party to actually fulfill its progressive agenda, we need to have members that are unbought and unafraid to stand up to the billionaires and corporations."
An anonymous House Democrat told Axios, as Breitbart reported, that DeGette would "quite likely" lose, and warned that leadership "ignores this at its own peril."
Not every socialist challenger won Tuesday. Sen. John Hickenlooper survived his Colorado Democratic Senate primary against Julie Gonzales, a former DSA member and state senator. But the trend line is clear enough. In the span of a few weeks, DSA-backed candidates have defeated or displaced establishment Democrats in at least four congressional races across two states.
The incoming class includes a candidate who described both the October 7 massacre and September 11 as "inevitable," who wants to abolish ICE, who was fired from her law firm for an open letter about eliminating Israel, and who refused to call a firebombing of a pro-Israel rally antisemitic. She will represent a district that hasn't elected a Republican in half a century. Senior Democrats like Nancy Pelosi have gone silent as the pattern deepens.
Jeffries can blame the "unsettled electoral environment" on Trump if he wants. But Trump was not on the ballot in Colorado's 1st District. The only names on that ballot belonged to Democrats, and the Democrats' own voters chose the socialist.
When your base keeps picking the candidate who calls mass terrorism "inevitable" over the one with three decades of seniority, the problem is not the other party. The problem is yours.
