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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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Democratic socialist Melat Kiros beat U.S. Representative Diana DeGette in a Colorado House primary on Tuesday, ousting a nearly 30-year incumbent in a stunning victory for the first-time candidate.
Kiros' victory over DeGette, who was first elected in 1996, makes her the latest candidate to rise from the party’s left flank to defeat establishment-backed candidates. It comes a week after two self-described democratic socialists and a progressive won their Democratic primaries in New York after being endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The verified projected final totals widely reported by major Colorado outlets showed Kiros at 49.3 percent, DeGette at 43.5 percent, and Wanda James at 7.2 percent. The Associated Press had called the race shortly after 12 a.m. EDT on Wednesday.
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Kiros, a 29-year-old lawyer turned doctoral student, will face Christy Peterson, the only Republican candidate in the race, in November to represent Colorado’s 1st Congressional District.
Kiros is heavily favored to win November’s election in the deep blue district, which covers most of the city and county of Denver, and reach Congress in January. She is poised to become both Colorado's first Black female representative in Congress and the first Gen Z woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Colorado's 1st Congressional District holds a Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI) of D+29—making it the most heavily Democratic seat in the Mountain West—which explains why prediction markets show Kiros' victory as highly guaranteed.
Newsweek reached out by email to the campaigns of Melat Kiros, Diana DeGette and Christy Peterson for comment on Wednesday morning but hadn't received a response before publication.
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Kiros' Chances of Winning
Tuesday’s primary was the biggest hurdle in Kiros’ bid to reach Congress.
Polling in the wake of her primary win is yet to come, but prediction markets indicate she is heavily favored to win November’s election.
Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction market, gives the Democratic candidate in the race a 94.4 percent chance of victory as of early Wednesday, while the Republican candidate has a 10 percent chance.
Rival prediction market Polymarket also gives the Democratic candidate a 94 percent chance of victory, while the Republican candidate’s chances are 6 percent.
Prediction markets allow traders to buy and sell contracts tied to political outcomes and current events, aggregating real‑money wagers into probability estimates. Prices fluctuate as traders react to polling, fundraising, candidate developments and broader political trends. They measure trader sentiment at a given moment but do not always accurately predict the future.
Kiros: ‘We Are Just Getting Started’
Taking to a stage under a sign that read "Power to the People," Kiros told her supporters on Tuesday night that her win belonged to every one of them.
"This is a movement," Kiros said. "We are just getting started."
She promised to take the fight to President Donald Trump and the oligarchy, abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, pass "Medicare for All," and end what she termed the "genocide in Palestine."
She said: "We believe that fundamental change can and will happen if we fight for it. If we organize and show no fear in standing up for what’s right, that is the message that Denver has sent to both parties, to Donald Trump and to the entire country."
Kiros had made her criticism of the United States’ support for Israel central to her primary campaign.
In an interview with Colorado Public Radio, she accused Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza and called for the U.S. to impose a full arms embargo. DeGette said she opposed providing Israel with offensive weapons, but believes Israel has a right to defend itself.
Kiros entered politics after she was fired from her law firm Sidley Austin after refusing to retract an open letter criticizing the firm's definition of antisemitism, following the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Kiros faced criticism from some Democrats for telling KUSA's Kyle Clark that the 9/11 attacks were 'inevitable' due to U.S. foreign policy and for declining to call an attack on protests demonstrating for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder last year antisemitic.
She told 9News: "I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator. All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed, and I don’t even know what the people that were at that protest believed, too."
Kiros' victory was actually foreshadowed in the March Democratic Assembly where she dominated DeGette 67-33—major party candidates in Colorado can qualify for the primary ballot by securing at least 30% of the vote—but results in other concurrent statewide primaries, such as centrist Senator John Hickenlooper fending off progressive Julie Gonzales, show the complexity of the state's political climate.
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