Melta Kiros pulled off a major upset at the Colorado primary, beating 30-year incumbent US Representative Diana DeGette.
According to Al Jazeera, a democratic socialist on Tuesday, June 30, defeated DeGette in the party primary in a Denver-area district in Colorado.
Multiple US media outlets, after counting 78 percent of the votes, reported that Kiros had a nearly 7,000-vote lead over the 15-term veteran, highlighting the growing influence of the Democrats' progressive wing.
Who is Melat Kiros?
Melat Kiros is an American lawyer and doctoral student who, after an ambitious progressive agenda campaign, defeated a longtime Democratic incumbent.
The 29-year-old who moved to the US from Ethiopia as a baby is now favored to win the November election in an overwhelmingly Democratic district.
She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022, the year DeGette arrived in Congress. It was the same year when she wrote a blog post rejecting the accusation that the law students who protested Israel's attack on Palestine were antisemitic.
Kiros was fired from her job after she refused to remove a post criticizing law firms for their stance on Israel and Palestine.
Melat Kiros celebrates her victory
Kiros celebrated her stunning victory over DeGette with her supporters and called the win part of a bigger movement across the country.
She said, “We are winning from coast to coast. We are taking back our party and our country! This is a movement. We are just getting started.”
Kiros 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. I don’t even know what the people that were at that protest believed, too.”
She is the latest democratic socialist to oust an incumbent this summer. In New York City, three candidates with ties to the Democratic Socialists of America and endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries.
Justice Democrats praised Kiros
Justice Democrats hailed Kiros for building “a movement that inspired Denverites to remember they themselves have the power to transform what kind of Democratic Party they want to be represented by.”
Alexandra Rojas, the group’s executive director, said, “Melat and our candidates continue winning this cycle because Democratic voters are finally getting leaders acting on their demands to bring the fight to the corporations raising our prices, the war lobbies profiting off endless war and genocide, and the immigration gestapo terrorizing our communities.”
Democrats winning primaries
Also on Tuesday, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser beat US Senator Michael Bennet for the Democratic nomination for governor.
State Representative Manny Rutinel also won the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican US Representative Gabe Evans in a battleground district that Democrats consider a top pickup opportunity in the November 3 midterm elections.
It is worth noting Trump’s Republican Party now holds a slim majority in the US House of Representatives and Senate. Democrats need to net three seats to win control of the House in November and four to win the Senate.
