The once-sleepy primary race to represent Colorado’s 1st Congressional District turned into one of the most-watched elections in the country this summer as first-time candidate and democratic socialist Melat Kiros unseated longtime U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette.
By early Wednesday evening, when Denver had finished counting the bulk of its ballots, Kiros — who was not alive when DeGette, 68, was elected to her first of 15 terms — led the congresswoman by more than 13 percentage points.
The 29-year-old lawyer marshalled grassroots support and an array of favorable forces to dislodge a fixture of Denver’s political scene — and upend the shadow primary that had quietly awaited DeGette’s retirement, with aspiring successors biding their time. Kiros’ campaign, working with the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, out-organized DeGette repeatedly, nearly keeping her off the ballot in the spring and then overcoming DeGette’s hefty financial advantage in the campaign’s final weeks.
The campaign harnessed — or at least rode — the discontent that Democratic voters have expressed for their longtime party officials, including with her full-throated support of the Palestinian people over Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. The congressional district’s Democratic electorate, dominated by Denverites, turned out in numbers that eclipsed nearly every prior primary race in DeGette’s career.
“Melat ran a compelling campaign with a vision about what America can be and should be, rather than being this politician that constantly tells voters no,” said Deep Singh Badhesha, a Denver DSA member who worked with Kiros’ campaign. “… Itap something you’re seeing all across the nation. Itap that do-nothing Democrats aren’t good enough anymore.”
Meanwhile, DeGette, who had batted away the occasional primary challenger over the years, appeared flat-footed.
She highlighted her progressive bona fides and her experience. But her pitch — that she was a proven progressive who’d managed one of President Donald Trump’s impeachments and would have seniority should the Democrats retake Congress this fall — failed to counteract the wave that Kiros had caught.
“DeGette is liberal, and particularly had done a lot of work on reproductive rights,” said Paul Teske, a professor at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs who had Kiros as a student in one of his classes. “I wouldn’t paint her too far in the center, though Melat was certainly to the left. But the enthusiasm gap, the age gap and the willingness to fight Trump (put Kiros over).”
In a video DeGette released around noon Wednesday to concede the race, she congratulated Kiros for her win. She said she would make the most of her final six months in office.
“Frankly, this was not the way I would have wanted to end my career in politics, but I’m proud of my accomplishments,” she said. “… I strive every day to be the quintessential legislator, passing bills of my own design and collaborating with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make a better society for all Americans.
“Sadly, in our toxic political climate, there seems to be little room for that type of politician anymore.”
Decisive defeat amid high turnout
When DeGette trailed at the first ballot drop Tuesday evening, her defeat appeared certain. By Wednesday, the win had turned into a rout.
“In the cold light of morning, 10 points — that almost feels like there aren’t many tactical or strategic decisions the campaign could have made that would have changed the outcome,” Ian Silverii, a political consultant whose firm briefly worked for DeGette in the spring, said on a livestream of his podcast Wednesday morning. The margin later grew more.
The victory propels Kiros to the November election in solid-blue Denver against a Republican nominee, Christy Peterson, who’s little known and hasn’t reported fundraising.
Kiros, who is also a member of the Denver DSA chapter, rode the same waves that propelled similar candidates elsewhere. A week before her victory, three New York City congressional candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries.
Kiros received the Denver DSA endorsement earlier this year, and her campaign and the organization later became “totally bound up” in each other, said Susie Ramsey, the co-chair of Denver DSA and a Kiros campaign staffer. The Denver group modeled its approach for Kiros — training field leads who could run their own canvassing efforts in specific parts of the district — after Mamdani’s approach in New York.
But at the time, the DSA’s electoral muscle in the state had atrophied, she said. The Denver DSA has endorsed some Denver City Council candidates, with a handful winning in recent elections, but most of its council slate lost in 2023.
Ramsey said that, initially, she thought Kiros’ campaign was a long shot but, if nothing else, it could help build left-wing power in the city.
Then Kiros and DSA organizers nearly kept DeGette off of the ballot at the party’s nominating assemblies in March, where the incumbent barely cleared the 30% viability threshold of support among party delegates. The process was a proving ground for DSA’s newfound organizing, and its success helped rally members and convince them — and Kiros — that they could topple DeGette.
Crucially, it also earned the campaign invaluable media attention.
“It built our muscle,” Ramsey said.
By the end of the campaign, the Denver DSA’s membership had grown from around 1,350 to nearly 1,800 members, Ramsey said. Kiros’ campaign had 1,800 volunteers — half of whom, Ramsey estimated, were DSA members.
The DSA-backed success in New York, Ramsey said, “is showing us what the horizon is, and Denver is showing you how we can compress the timeline.”
In a memo distributed Wednesday, the Colorado Polling Institute pointed to an August survey that found that more than half of Denver Democratic voters had a favorable view of socialism. Among voters under the age of 35, 65% had a favorable view of socialism, compared to 35% who were supportive of capitalism.
Annie Orloff, a spokeswoman for Kiros’ campaign, also attributed some of the campaign’s success to its association with the DSA.
“Socialism is very popular here. Or at least a little more popular than capitalism,” Orloff said. “I think (Denver DSA) will keep growing. You could see at the watch party — at all of our canvasses — that people are so hungry to be a part of a community that is fun, that is also fighting for working people.”
'A rejection of the old guard'
But Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University, disagreed.
“Kiros’ victory reads as more a rejection of the old guard than a conversion to socialism,” he wrote in . “Downtown Denver is young, educated, full of renters and mostly socialist-adjacent at best. Many of those voters are tired of the establishment, and the DSA was the only outfit organized enough to give that feeling a home.”
How amenable Denver voters are to the values of democratic socialism may be less relevant than how much work Kiros' campaign put into organizing, however. Volunteers knocked on 115,000 doors and made more than half a million phone calls, Ramsey said.
“To overcome the millions of dollars in dark money, we were able to have real conversations with folks across the city, and I think that made a real difference,” Orloff said.
DeGette’s campaign spent $1.2 million, while outside supporters dropped more than $2.3 million in the past month to bolster the congresswoman’s chances. Much of that support came from Pro-Choice Majority Action, which had been funded in part by groups supporting Israel.
Those ads, some of which attacked Kiros for “recently moving to Denver,” appeared to turn some voters away from DeGette, Orloff said. A child of immigrants, Kiros was born in Ethiopia but moved to Denver with her family as a baby.
“Itap anecdotal, but we had people show up to canvas after seeing some of those ads,” she said.
Kiros shocked Colorado’s political world when she secured her place on the ballot by winning the county assembly earlier this year. Then, a few couple weeks later, DeGette only narrowly landed on the ballot herself.
“She also fell asleep. (DeGette) did not take this as seriously as she should have,” said Jason Bane, who operates the Democratic political website ColoradoPols.com. “The combination of anger about Trump and anger about older elected officials — and DeGette’s general absence in the district — made this a perfect opportunity for someone like Kiros.”
Ramsey said that by the time DeGette started taking the race seriously, “it was too late for her.” Her campaign and the DSA had already shifted gears from the assembly process to the full campaign.
“We almost pushed her off the ballot, you would think that would wake her up,” Ramsey said.
DeGette spoke only through her video and statement Wednesday. A campaign spokesman said the congresswoman wasn’t available for an interview.
Teske, the CU Denver professor, said itap hard for candidates like DeGette to make their case to voters when they’re in the minority party in the House.
“I imagine when you've been elected 15 times over 30 years, you get a little complacent maybe,” Teske said, noting that DeGette has fended off challengers from the left before.
Of his former student, he recalls telling Kiros how difficult it would be to unseat DeGette. Ultimately, he said Kiros won with a “smart, politically savvy” campaign that tapped into a national political atmosphere.
Staff writer Nick Coltrain contributed to this story.
