AOC Responds After Socialist Wins House Primary

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is celebrating after another socialist-backed candidate scored a major victory in a Democratic U.S. House primary Tuesday night.

Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old socialist, defeated 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in a deep-blue House district anchored in Denver, Colorado, marking another major win for the Democratic Party’s far-left wing.

The result comes just days after a slate of socialist candidates won Democratic primaries in New York City, giving the Democratic Socialists of America another sign that its influence inside the party is growing.

After the race was called, Kiros framed the victory as part of a larger political movement.

“Denver voters of all ages, of all races, of all religions sent a clear message: we will not wait… We won tonight, but this is about something so much bigger than this moment… This is a movement. And we are just getting started,” she said.

During the campaign, Kiros praised Ocasio-Cortez as one of the figures who helped inspire her political approach.

“AOC and Summer Lee, I think those two have really done an incredible job of highlighting the cause for a lot of the failure to deliver for working people in the country,” Kiros said.

The DSA had openly hoped DeGette’s defeat would prove the socialist left’s momentum was spreading beyond New York.

“Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West,” the DSA wrote in a social media post last week.

If Kiros wins the general election in November, she is expected to align with the far-left group known as the Squad and become one of a small but growing number of open socialists in the House.

Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia, ran an insurgent campaign against DeGette, a longtime incumbent who was already considered a progressive Democrat.

Her campaign was also boosted by controversial socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who has said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel and has praised the Chinese Communist Party.

Kiros’ past statements on Israel, Hamas, and U.S. foreign policy became a major flashpoint in the race.

In 2023, Kiros, a PhD student and lawyer, was fired from a New York firm after publishing an open letter arguing that pro-Palestinian student protesters calling for the elimination of Israel were not antisemitic and appearing to endorse Hamas.

Kiros has also suggested that the United States bore responsibility for the conditions that led to 9/11.

“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 told 9News when asked if she believed the terror attack was “the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.”

“And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros continued.

She also described the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks against Israel as the “inevitable consequence of apartheid.”

Kiros later declined to call the firebombing of protesters in Boulder who were calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza antisemitic.

“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros told Colorado’s 9News in a recent television interview. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.”

A June 2025 bipartisan resolution condemned the Boulder attack as part of a “rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals.”

Every present lawmaker supported the resolution except Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who voted present.

For conservatives, Kiros’ victory is another warning sign that the socialist left is no longer operating on the margins of the Democratic Party.

DeGette was not a conservative Democrat.

She was a long-serving progressive incumbent.

Yet even that was not enough to protect her from a challenger backed by the DSA, praised by AOC-aligned activists, and amplified by far-left online influencers.

The result will likely strengthen Republican arguments heading into the midterms that Democrats are being pulled further left by candidates who are hostile to Israel, skeptical of American foreign policy, supportive of massive government expansion, and eager to remake the party from within.

Ocasio-Cortez’s celebration of the result also comes as speculation continues about her own national ambitions.

Earlier this month, she did not rule out a 2028 presidential run when asked by Fox News.

“Could I be president?” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Could I not be president? Maybe, maybe not.”

She argued that achieving universal health care would matter more than holding any particular title, including the presidency.

Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly tried to frame her political future around policy outcomes rather than personal ambition.

But with socialist candidates now winning primaries from New York to Colorado, her influence inside the Democratic Party is becoming harder to ignore.

The Squad was once treated as a loud but limited faction.

Now, its ideological allies are knocking off long-time incumbents.

For Democrats, that means a growing internal power struggle.

For Republicans, it means a clear campaign message: the socialist left is expanding, and the Democratic establishment is failing to stop it.