A 29-year-old Democratic Socialists of America member who wants to abolish ICE, impose an arms embargo on Israel, and cheered a major defense-tech employer's departure from her home state has just toppled a 15-term Democratic incumbent in Denver. The Associated Press called the Colorado First Congressional District primary for Melat Kiros at 11:03 p.m. on June 30, with Kiros leading Rep. Diana DeGette 49.3 percent to 43.5 percent and an estimated 78 percent of ballots counted. A third candidate, University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, drew 7.2 percent.
The result was not a fluke. It was the latest, and perhaps the most telling, sign that the Democratic Party's left flank is no longer content to push from the sidelines. It is replacing the party's incumbents outright.
Kiros's win came one week after democratic socialist candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeated incumbent Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat in New York primaries. Fox News reported that Kiros became the 28th candidate endorsed by far-left groups to win a Democratic primary this cycle, and the sixth insurgent to oust a sitting incumbent. A full sweep of endorsed candidates still on the ballot could produce a 43-member far-left bloc in the House by January 2027, Fox noted, vastly outnumbering the 10-member Blue Dog Democrat caucus.
The Washington Examiner reported that DSA-backed candidates have won more than 30 races in the 2026 election cycle, citing the group's own tracker. Colorado's First Congressional District is so heavily Democratic that Kiros is nearly certain to take the seat in November.
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned that "Marxists, socialists, and the insurgent far-left" have taken over the Democratic Party and said "Mini-Mamdani" candidates are emerging nationwide. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Democrats had officially become the "party of socialism."
They have a point, and the evidence is the Democrats' own primary ballot.
Kiros is a lawyer, PhD student, and barista whose family immigrated from Ethiopia when she was a baby. She was born the same year DeGette first took office. She is a card-carrying DSA member who secured endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Ro Khanna, Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement, Track AIPAC, and the Colorado Working Families Party. Justice Democrats' super PAC spent more than $500,000 backing her. The American Priorities PAC added another $150,000.
Her policy positions read like a socialist wish list. She has called capitalism "responsible for a lot of the degradation that we're seeing in our economy... in our democracy... in our climate as well." She told Axios that Democratic leadership is "too cautious, too incremental, and too afraid of upsetting their donors." She said the party has "lost step" with its working-class roots and must reckon with "the role that our party has played in maintaining this oligarchy."
On immigration, Kiros told livestreamer Hasan Piker, the nephew of The Young Turks broadcaster Cenk Uygur, that abolishing ICE is "just one step" and that there should be an "immediate pathway for every undocumented immigrant." She described Denver as "really, really, really strong" on "welcoming immigrants" and being a sanctuary city.
On the economy, she said in a 9NEWS interview that she was "excited" to see Palantir Technologies leave Colorado, accusing the company of "embedding itself within the United States government, taking as much of our data as possible and using it for their own benefit." She also named Lockheed and Suncor as companies she would like to see depart the state, defense, energy, and tech employers, gone.
"I sincerely believe that companies that profit off of war are not companies that we should seek to promote and grow. I want to see a world where war doesn't exist anymore."
That was Kiros on companies that work with the defense sector. The workers at those companies, and the communities that depend on their paychecks, apparently did not factor into the calculation.
Kiros has been explicit about how she plans to wield power in Washington. She told Axios that if enough like-minded members share her commitments, Medicare for All, ending what she called "corporate capture," and an arms embargo on Israel, they should set terms for party leadership.
"If you want our votes on leadership, on appropriations, this is what it costs."
She added that she "will not vote for any Democrat for a leadership position if they take corporate PAC money", a direct challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. An unnamed House Democrat told Axios that leadership that "ignores this" does so "at its own peril."
Another unnamed lawmaker put it more bluntly: it was "not helpful when Bernie and colleagues endorse against you."
In her victory remarks, Kiros declared, "We are winning from coast to coast. We are taking back our party and our country!" She added: "This is a movement. We are just getting started."
Diana DeGette, 68, was not some centrist relic. She co-sponsored Medicare for All. She sat on the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, Reps. Greg Casar, Maxwell Frost, and Pramila Jayapal, endorsed her. Pro-abortion groups backed her. None of it mattered.
DeGette's sin, in the eyes of the insurgent left, was accepting corporate PAC support and not going far enough on Israel. She told colleagues she believed she would prevail. She was wrong. The 15-term incumbent lost to a first-time candidate who called her district "one of the most progressive and one of the youngest districts in the country", and proved it.
The Washington Examiner noted that Kiros was fired from a New York law firm in 2023 for denying that questioning Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state was antisemitic, and that her rhetoric had been denounced by Jewish leaders in Denver. Fox News reported that Kiros described the September 11 attacks as "inevitable," saying they were "inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East, which led people to believe that another act of violence was the only response."
Those remarks did not sink her candidacy. In Denver's First District, they may have helped it.
The Colorado primary was part of a larger night. Newsmax reported that progressive state Rep. Manny Rutinel won the Democratic primary in Colorado's competitive Eighth Congressional District, defeating a more moderate candidate favored by party leaders. Sen. John Hickenlooper survived his own progressive challenger, but the trend line is clear.
President Trump used the prior week's New York results to press the point, saying Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had "lost his way" and had undergone "the greatest transformation of a political ideology I've ever seen" on Israel.
Sen. Rand Paul told Breitbart News Daily that it is "alarming" that voters in some areas are backing socialists, arguing that many young people associate socialism with "fairness" without understanding its consequences.
That observation deserves more attention than it typically gets. Kiros's platform calls to codify abortion in federal law, make abortion a constitutional right, and ensure reproductive care includes "gender-affirming services." Her campaign literature states that "reproductive freedom is also economic freedom." She has backed what prior reporting described as a "Trans Bill of Rights." She wants Medicare for All, an arms embargo on a U.S. ally, and an open path for every illegal immigrant in the country.
These are not fringe positions in the new Democratic primary electorate. They are winning positions. And every Democrat in a competitive general-election district will have to answer for them.
If Democrats retake the House majority in November, Kiros and her allies plan to use their bloc as a veto over leadership votes, appropriations, and foreign policy. Forty-three members with a shared agenda and a willingness to withhold votes can paralyze a narrow majority. Hakeem Jeffries already knows this. Whether he can do anything about it is another question.
The Democratic establishment spent decades telling voters it was the party of the working class. Now its own primary voters are telling it that wasn't left enough. The replacements are not asking for a seat at the table. They are flipping it over.
When a 29-year-old who wants to abolish ICE, chase defense employers out of her state, and hand conditions to her own party leadership defeats a 15-term incumbent by nearly six points, the question is no longer whether the Democratic Party has a socialist problem. The question is whether the Democratic Party still runs the Democratic Party.
