The wave of defeats for incumbent Democrats facing primary challenges from the anti-Israel left continued on Tuesday, as Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old lawyer and Democratic Socialist, unseated 15-term incumbent Representative Diana DeGette in the Democratic primary election in Colorado.
The Associated Press called the race about three hours after polls closed in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, which includes most of Denver.
With 93 per cent of votes counted, Kiros had secured 67,959 votes (51.3 per cent) to DeGette’s 55,179 (41.7 per cent).
Like the trio of candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who won Democratic primaries in New York last week, Kiros made her opposition to Israel, which she accuses of committing “genocide” in Gaza and “ethnic cleansing” in Lebanon, a defining feature of her candidacy.
As with the Democratic incumbents who lost in two of those races in New York, DeGette, who was first elected in 1996, was on the Democratic left as a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act.
But she was outflanked by a vehement critic of the Jewish state backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia and immigrated to the United States with her parents as an infant, entered politics after she was fired from her role as an associate at the law firm Sidley Austin when she refused to take down an open letter she wrote on November 7, 2023, criticising the firm’s view that calling for Israel’s destruction was a form of antisemitism.
“By conflating ‘calls for the elimination of the Israeli state’ with antisemitism, you delegitimise any solution that forces Israel to reckon with its colonial role in Palestine, including one-state solutions called for by Palestinians and Israelis alike – one state, under the historic Palestine,” she wrote in a blog post.
In an interview with a local NBC news station in June, Kiros stood by her past comments that Hamas’s October 7 massacre was the “inevitable consequence of apartheid”.
“Certain conditions lead people to feel like violence is their only answer,” Kiros said.
“Israel is a country that has been accused of apartheid and occupation for decades now and has been able to resist any kind of change despite all of the frustration on the world stage that people have had for the conditions that Palestinians have been living in.”
She also agreed with a follow-up question asking whether the 9/11 attacks were also the "inevitable consequence" of American foreign policy.
“We destabilised a lot of the Middle East,” Kiros said. “That forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response.”
In the same interview, she refused to say whether she thought the 2025 firebombing of marchers in Boulder, Colorado, who were calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas, was antisemitic.
With Tuesday’s primary victory, Kiros will likely be heading to Congress after the general election in November in the heavily Democratic district.
However, as Republicans face headwinds in the 2026 midterms over the unpopularity of the war against Iran and an approval rating for President Trump that is routinely between 30 and 40 per cent, some conservatives see the continued victories for far-left candidates in Democratic primaries as a lifeline.
“The radicals are taking over battleground districts, putting must-win seats out of reach for Democrats and sinking their chances of flipping the House,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella stated after Kiros's victory.
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