Democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeats 15-term incumbent in Colorado House primary

Melat Kiros who has unseated Diana DeGette in Colorado’s first Congressional District. Photograph: RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post/AP View image in fullscreen Melat Kiros who has unseated Diana DeGette in Colorado’s first Congressional District. Photograph: RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post/AP Democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeats 15-term incumbent in Colorado House primary Twenty-nine-year-old beat Representative Diana DeGette in deep-blue Denver district The democratic socialist Melat Kiros unseated long-serving US representative Diana DeGette in Colorado’s primary elections held on Tuesday, after a campaign in which support for Israel became a wedge issue among voters. The Associated Press reported that Kiros had defeated DeGette for the Democratic nomination in the deep-blue first congressional district centered on Denver. The victory of Kiros came a week after New York voters unseated two Democratic congressional incumbents and replaced a third who was retiring with candidates who had campaigned on standing up to Israel amid accusations that it was carrying out a genocide in Gaza. Kiros, 29, was born in Ethiopia in 1997 – the year DeGette arrived in Congress – and graduated from law school at the University of Notre Dame in 2022. The following year, she wrote a blog post rejecting accusations that law students who protested Israel’s counterattack after 7 October were antisemitic. The New York law firm where Kiros was working fired her after she refused to take the post down, and she then went into politics. After announcing her run for Congress, Kiros picked up endorsements from progressive senator Bernie Sanders, as well as the Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats, progressive groups that had also been involved in New York’s primaries. Kiros sought to mount a generational challenge to the 68-year-old DeGette, a member of the congressional progressive caucus, and made concerns about US support for Israel prominent in her campaign. View image in fullscreen Celebrations after the first report of election results show Democratic congressional candidate Melat Kiros in the lead. Photograph: Rebecca Slezak/AP In an interview with Colorado Public Radio (CPR), Kiros accused the country of carrying out a genocide in Gaza and called for the United States to impose an arms embargo. DeGette opposes providing offensive arms to Israel, but told CPR that she believes the country has a right to exist and defend itself. The representative’s campaign criticized comments Kiros made in a recent interview, including a refusal to say whether she considered a 2025 firebombing attack on pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, to be motivated by antisemitism. “I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros told 9News. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed. I don’t even know what the people that were at that protest believed, too.” Kiros also said in the interview that she vi