DENVER — Denver awoke to a new normal on Wednesday morning after first-time-candidate and democratic socialist Melat Kiros soundly defeated longtime progressive incumbent U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the Democratic primary race to represent Colorado’s 1st Congressional District.

Kiros carried a lead of nearly 10 percentage points as of Wednesday morning, with more than 80% of ballots counted, according to The Associated Press.

The AP called the race late Tuesday, and DeGette, who was elected in 1996, posted a video on social media on Wednesday conceding the race and congratulating Kiros. This was the first time the congresswoman had faced a truly serious primary challenge in her 15 terms. While DeGette and Kiros shared many policy ideals, the race served as a referendum on establishment politicians and American leaders’ policies regarding the Israel-Hamas war.

Kiros supporters threw a raucous celebration in Capitol Hill on Tuesday night, dancing late into the night until Kiros declared victory. In interviews with the media, including The Denver Post, Kiros opined on what her victory meant for national politics.

“I think this says that billionaires and corporations have spent so much time and so much money trying to convince us that we didn’t have this kind of power,” she said. “I think we made it abundantly clear that the reason they spend that much time and money is because they know how powerful we can be.”

Here’s what we know about the Democrat who is now favored in dark-blue Denver to become its new representative in Congress.

What is Kiros’ background?

Kiros is 29-year-old attorney and Ph.D. student who also worked as a part-time barista at the Whittier Cafe in Denver while she was running for Congress over the past year.

A child of immigrants, Kiros was born in Ethiopia but moved to Denver with her family as a baby. She left the city to attend Washington College in Maryland and went on to attend law school at the University of Notre Dame. She then passed the bar exam and went to work as a securities regulation attorney at a large law firm in New York.

Kiros moved back to Colorado after being fired by the firm in response to a blog post she wrote about Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in the country, the immediate precursor of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

She said she decided to get more involved in politics. She volunteered for another congressional campaign in Colorado in 2024 and has been pursuing a doctorate in public policy with a focus on “democracy reform” at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs.

Kiros’ motivation to run for Congress

Kiros filed to run against DeGette a year before the primary, telling Westword last summer: “This isn’t about age. It’s about ability and it’s about priorities. When it comes to folks who have been in Congress for decades … they have become so disconnected from what it is like to be an ordinary person who doesn’t have that kind of power, and what it means to operate in this economy today.”

DeGette and Kiros share many of the same policy objectives, with the incumbent regarded as a progressive member of Congress — even earning a shout-out by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her co-sponsorship of “Medicare for All” legislation during a big rally in Denver last year with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, another liberal icon.

Ultimately, Sanders endorsed Kiros, while Ocasio-Cortez didn’t weigh in on the primary race.

Kiros’ ads criticized national Democratic figures for making empty promises, with the candidate saying: “We hear politicians say over and over that we need bold leadership, progress and change. We’ve heard this for years. Decades. But they never deliver.”

“Our party isn’t fighting back like they should,” she goes on to say.

She has told The Post that her top three policy priorities would be passing Medicare for All and universal child care and creating a publicly financed election system similar to the one that Denver uses in city elections, which includes public matching for smaller-dollar donations.

Kiros’ views on Israel and Gaza

Kiros also has cited the war in Gaza as a motivation to run, tapping into frustration among many Democratic voters about how party leaders have handled the war. She’s noted that DeGette has cast votes in support of military aid to Israel — though more recently, DeGette has said she won’t support offensive weapons for Israel that could be used on Palestinians.

Kiros has said that two years into her job at Sidley Austin, one of the biggest law firms in the country, firm leaders fired her for a 2023 blog post she wrote questioning Israel’s legitimacy as a state and disavowing a letter her firm had signed on to about the rise in antisemitism.

“This letter rightfully rebukes the anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry of all kinds that has spiked in recent weeks, but then goes on (to my confusion) to cite ‘calls for the elimination of the Israeli state’ as anti-Semitism,” she wrote in the post. “… To conflate such bigotry with the geo-political question of Israel’s legitimacy is one of the greatest travesties in this conflict.”

During the campaign, Kiros was criticized for sharing a social media post with a video that said Democrats “fellate Israel” and “suck (expletive).” The video was promoting an online rally for progressive candidates and speakers. Kiros said she didn’t write that phrasing and didn’t endorse that language.

Jewish groups and fellow progressives have criticized the way Kiros talks about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including when she refused to say in a 9News interview last month whether a June 2025 firebomb attack in Boulder on a group of people marching in support of Jewish hostages was antisemitic.

When it became clear Kiros was gaining ground

Kiros, who ended up being one of two primary challengers, demolished DeGette in the Democrats’ Denver County assembly in March, a surprising development in a race that many considered to be predetermined.

She didn’t keep DeGette off the ballot, but she gave her a scare by winning 646 votes, or the support of 63% of those present at the county assembly. DeGette won 336, or 32% of the votes. DeGette narrowly won her place on the ballot two weeks later at the congressional district assembly.

“This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact that Denver Democrats want a fighter — somebody who is actually committed to transformative change,” Kiros said in an interview around that time with The Post.

DeGette was losing support from some prominent Democrats. Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, who supported Wanda James in the primary, accused the incumbent of losing touch with her constituents: “It’s just time for a change.”

“I think there’s an energy for politics that says, ‘Our problems are more complicated than Donald Trump alone. We’ve got to confront the conditions that led to Donald Trump,’ ” Denver-based state Rep. Javier Mabrey, who backed Kiros, told The Post. “I think Melat has tapped into that.”

Kiros is a democratic socialist. What does that mean?

Kiros was endorsed by the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as the DSA’s national group, and by the Justice Democrats. She also describes herself as a democratic socialist.

The Denver DSA group, on its website, calls for “an organized movement of millions of working class people” and summarizes its beliefs this way: “We believe that our government and our workplaces should be run democratically by workers like us to meet the needs of our community, not to enrich billionaires, millionaires, and those who do their bidding. We oppose all forms of oppression and believe everyone has a right to healthcare, housing, a living wage, and more.”

DeGette and outside groups that backed her with big spending sent mailers or ran ads in the final weeks that attacked Kiros based on her DSA affiliation, suggesting she’d defund the police and try to abolish the U.S. Senate if elected. Kiros’ campaign told the Colorado Sun that she doesn’t believe those things, which DeGette’s campaign said were based on the DSA platform.

Kiros told The Post that if elected, she would use her position to “call out the Democrats who are not actually fighting for our values” and pressure them to change the votes she disagrees with. That could include civil protests and threatening quorum, she said.

She said she saw herself aligning with progressive members of Congress like Sen. Sanders of Vermont and Reps. Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania

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