Progressives target – After a string of upset victories in New York, a rising progressive movement is turning its attention to Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist and lawyer, is challenging 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in a primary s
When last week’s upsets in New York ended with victories for progressive candidates. the left flank didn’t linger in celebration. Within hours. attention turned to Colorado’s 1st Congressional District—a race Democrats here describe as possibly the hardest challenge Rep. Diana DeGette has faced in years.
Melat Kiros, 29, a democratic socialist and lawyer, is taking on DeGette for Denver’s solidly blue seat. Kiros is aiming to turn this primary into something bigger than one election—arguing voters are ready to move past party leadership that, in her view, isn’t fighting for working people.
“I think voters have realized that the party and leadership are failing to meet this moment in a meaningful way, and it’s time for leaders who are actually going to be fighting for the interests of working people,” Kiros said.
Still, not everyone is ready to treat New York’s momentum like a roadmap. Ted Trimpa, a longtime Democratic strategist who helped build up Colorado’s Democratic infrastructure, cautioned his party against reading too much into last week’s results.
“Mamdani is not the messiah for Democrats,” Trimpa said. “And if Democrats think that he is, then they’re wandering around the wrong desert.”
That warning lands on a state with a complicated electorate. Roughly half of Colorado’s voters are unaffiliated. While Democrats hold both Senate seats and the governorship, the state has repeatedly elected more moderate candidates who have shown a willingness to buck the national party.
That independence—at times a political strength—is now facing sharper scrutiny. Gov. Jared Polis was censured by the state Democratic Party last month for granting clemency to election denier Tina Peters. In addition. Colorado’s two senators—one running for reelection and the other for governor—are facing blowback over their past votes for members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
Inside the progressive lane, momentum is being treated like an engine. Within hours of Assemblymember Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier’s projected wins in their New York primary races. fellow candidates backed by Justice Democrats moved to build up Kiros through fundraising. phone banking. and campaigning alongside her. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for the group, said the victories are meant to feed forward.
“Every race this cycle has added more and more momentum to the next,” Andrabi said. “What we’ve been really proud of as well is how much every candidate of ours who wins goes on and tries to pay it forward to the next.”
For DeGette, the question is how high the tide can rise. Democratic strategists in Colorado say this is likely to be her toughest race in years.
Kiros and DeGette both went through the party-run caucus and assembly process this spring. To get onto the primary ballot, candidates needed to win the support of 30% of party activists. DeGette only narrowly qualified, and Kiros outperformed her. After that, DeGette ramped up her campaign.
One longtime Colorado Democratic strategist—granted anonymity to speak candidly—said the incumbent is facing something unusual.
“I think this is probably the strongest challenge that she’s ever faced, but I also think she’s taking it as seriously as it needs to be,” the strategist said. “I wouldn’t be shocked if either outcome happens.”
A third candidate, University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, qualified for the ballot by collecting voter signatures.
On the surface, this primary is familiar: candidates arguing over who is best suited to fight the Trump administration. DeGette frames the contest as a choice about national noise versus local priorities.
“I’ve won contested primaries before, and I’m confident about this one,” DeGette said in a statement to CNN. “I’m running hard and talking to voters every day about what matters to families here, not national narratives playing out in other states.”
But the race has also been pulled hard in a different direction—U.S. policy toward Israel, and what that should mean when campaign rhetoric meets real-world violence.
Kiros has criticized U.S. relations with Israel, and her past has become part of the present. She was fired from a law firm in 2023 after she refused to take down an open letter arguing that student protesters’ calls for the elimination of Israel should not be conflated with antisemitism.
This week. Kiros’s positions also drew attention after she declined to describe as antisemitism a firebomb attack on protesters supporting Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Investigators say the attacker planned the attack for a year and told police he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people.” One person was killed and another dozen were injured.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros said in an interview with 9News. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.”
DeGette, meanwhile, has tried to shift Kiros’s spotlight toward experience and governance. She has criticized Kiros for accepting donations from corporate PACs. DeGette has defended her own progressive record by pointing to her work as an impeachment manager as evidence that she has fought Trump.
“Now is not the time to gamble and send somebody with no experience to Washington,” DeGette said at a candidate forum earlier this month.
In the final days of the election, the financial pressure has intensified. More than $1.5 million has poured into the race to boost DeGette, including $1.5 million from Pro-Choice Majority Action.
Those groups aired ads portraying DeGette as “the strongest voice fighting Trump,” and as an advocate for Medicare for All and defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They also attacked Kiros.
One ad from Mile High Accountability Project—a super PAC registered on April 29—called Kiros a recent Denver resident and accused her of wanting to divide Democrats. The ad says her supporters want to defund the police, abolish the Senate, and withdraw from NATO.
“Donald Trump loves Democrats like Kiros,” the ad says. “Enough attacks on Democrats. Enough division.”
Kiros, whose family immigrated to Denver from Ethiopia when she was a baby, called the suggestion that she just moved to the state “disrespectful” and said other attacks were misrepresenting her record.
“It’s reading as obviously desperate to a lot of our voters,” Kiros said. “It’s reading as Republican-esque, frankly, as well, and isn’t actually speaking to the things that Denverites really care about, which is how you’re going to make the city affordable for them.”
Her campaign is running alongside other progressive candidates testing voters’ appetite for change in Colorado this week.
In the U.S. Senate race, progressive state Sen. Julie Gonzales is challenging incumbent Sen. John Hickenlooper. Gonzales is running against a politician who has been in office for more than 20 years, first governing Colorado before heading to Washington.
“I know that we’re not fooled by his so-called common-sense approach, because there is no sense in voting for Donald Trump’s nominees,” Gonzales said in a campaign ad.
Hickenlooper voted for several Trump Cabinet nominees. including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. But a spokesperson for the senator said Hickenlooper opposed several other nominees. including former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“Hickenlooper has said that knowing what he knows now — that not a single one of the cabinet officials stood up to Trump’s lawlessness and corruption — he wouldn’t support any of them,” the statement said.
In the Democratic gubernatorial primary to succeed term-limited Gov. Polis, Sen. Michael Bennet’s path has been complicated by Attorney General Phil Weiser. Weiser has contrasted Bennet’s votes to confirm Trump’s nominees with his own work suing the Trump administration.
Weiser has also cast himself as the outsider in the race, saying Bennet should remain in his current role.
“Michael Bennet’s got 18 years of experience in Washington,” Weiser said in a recent interview with a local Fox News affiliate. “We need to keep him there.”
Back in Colorado’s political bloodstream, the mood is unsettled in more than one race. Alvina Vasquez, a Colorado-based Democratic strategist, said nerves are widespread.
“I think everybody’s nervous,” Vasquez said. “I don’t think anybody feels super confident.”
The tension running through Colorado’s primaries isn’t just ideological—it’s about timing, geography, and whether the energy that sparked New York will survive the shift to Denver.
Colorado 1st Congressional District Melat Kiros Diana DeGette progressive movement Justice Democrats Ted Trimpa Jared Polis Tina Peters U.S.-Israel policy Bernie Sanders Mile High Accountability Project Pro-Choice Majority Action Julie Gonzales John Hickenlooper Michael Bennet Phil Weiser