Socialist Defeats 15-Term Lawmaker in CO Democratic Primary

A major political earthquake hit Colorado on Tuesday night after 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., lost her Democratic primary to a challenger backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old socialist, defeated DeGette in a deep-blue House district anchored in Denver, giving the far left another major victory just days after socialist candidates scored a series of primary wins in New York City.

For the DSA, the result was exactly the kind of momentum-building victory the group had been hoping for.

“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 join the far-left group known as the Squad and become one of a small but growing number of vocal socialists in the House.

Her campaign received support from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Justice Democrats, the anti-incumbent left-wing organization that has helped push Democratic politics further left over the past several years.

Kiros’ insurgent primary bid also received a boost from controversial socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who has previously said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel and has praised the Chinese Communist Party.

DeGette was hardly a moderate.

The longtime congresswoman is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has backed abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

She was seeking a 16th term in the House and campaigned on her progressive record, arguing that her seniority on a powerful House committee would help advance legislation creating Medicare-for-All, a central goal of the Democratic Party’s far-left wing.

DeGette also highlighted her role as an impeachment manager during Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.

She was backed by former Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.

But in the modern Democratic Party, even long-standing progressive credentials were not enough to protect DeGette from a socialist challenge.

While DeGette and Kiros disagreed on several policy issues, their sharpest divide centered on Israel, antisemitism, and foreign policy.

Kiros also criticized DeGette for accepting corporate PAC money.

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

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

Kiros later refused to categorize the firebombing of protesters in Boulder last year who were calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza as 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 measure except Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who voted present.

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

“Inevable 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.

DeGette argued that Kiros’ ties to Piker and her comments about antisemitism and 9/11 should disqualify her from public office.

“I’m shocked and disgusted that Kiros is doubling down on excusing terrorism and the murder of innocent people,” DeGette wrote on Facebook earlier this month.

For Republicans, the result is another clear sign that the Democratic Party’s center of gravity is shifting sharply left.

DeGette was already a progressive Democrat with decades of liberal credentials.

Yet she still lost to a DSA-backed challenger supported by Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Justice Democrats, and some of the most radical online voices in left-wing politics.

The victory will likely fuel Republican arguments heading into the midterms that Democrats are no longer being pulled by their moderate wing, but by socialists openly hostile to Israel, law enforcement, border security, capitalism, and traditional American foreign policy.

The DSA’s success in New York was already alarming to conservatives.

Now, its victory in Colorado suggests the movement is spreading beyond the coastal progressive strongholds where Republicans usually expect it to thrive.

For Democrats, DeGette’s loss is a warning.

For conservatives, it is campaign material.

And for voters watching the Democratic Party’s internal civil war, the message is hard to miss: the socialist left is not waiting for permission anymore.

It is taking seats.