Socialist Hot Streak Continues As Radical Leftist Unseats 15-Term Democrat

Democratic socialist Melat Kiros upset incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) in the primary for Colorado’s 1st congressional district on Tuesday night as the far-Left continues its hot streak in Democratic contests.

With 93% of the vote counted as of Wednesday morning, Kiros holds 51.3% to DeGette’s 41.7%, with Wanda James, another candidate in the race, taking 7%.

DeGette, who has held the House seat for as long as 29-year-old Kiros has been alive, will likely be replaced by Kiros after the general election. Kiros will be heavily favored over Republican nominee Christy Peterson in the general election in a district that last elected a Republican in 1970.

Kiros, endorsed by democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), wants to increase publicly owned housing, make college tuition free, hike the corporate tax rate from 21% to 50%, end at-will employment, create an AI moratorium, abolish ICE, allow gender-affirming care for all ages, and invest in “community-based” emergency response teams over police.

Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia and immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was an infant, also proposed giving immediate citizenship to all illegal immigrants in the United States.

“Abolishing ICE is just one step … I think there has to be an immediate pathway for every single undocumented immigrant that’s here in this country today that doesn’t require them to shell out thousands of dollars to go through the process,” she said.

The leftist Democrat has also faced criticism over recent comments she made on the 9/11 and October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, arguing that 9/11 was the result of American foreign policy and October 7 was “the inevitable consequence of apartheid.”

Kiros has spent the majority of the last decade in school, obtaining an economics and political science degree from Washington College, a law degree from Notre Dame, and is currently pursuing her PhD in public affairs at the University of Colorado. She currently works as a barista while running for Congress.

She was an attorney for about 15 months before she was fired after criticizing her own law firm and other firms for signing a statement that pushed for deans to address antisemitic language and protests on college campuses after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. In her own letter in November 2023, Kiros claimed she was confused why calls for the elimination of the Israeli state were seen as antisemitic.

Kiros is the latest democratic socialist to cruise to a primary victory after three radical leftists won their primaries in New York last week. Some sitting Democrats are embracing the radical newcomers.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said after New York’s wins there is “a new, strong, and bold Democratic party.” On Tuesday, New York City democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani claimed socialists “not only understood economics” but they can right the so-called wrongs created by capitalism.

Kiros told SiriusXM radio, “People are seeing that capitalism is responsible for a lot of the degradation that we’re seeing in our economy, in our democracy, in our climate.” She attributes socialism’s rise to people “demanding a new way to organize our economy, our government and making sure that’s all centered on working families and protecting basic needs.”

Melat Kiros: “People are seeing that capitalism is responsible for a lot of the degradation that we’re seeing in our economy, in our democracy, in our climate and they’re demanding a new way to organize our economy, our government and making sure that’s all centered on working… pic.twitter.com/SKwvzP8KIt

— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) June 30, 2026