Colorado Democratic congressional nominee Melat Kiros brushed aside concerns about communists inside the Democratic Socialists of America on Friday, arguing Republicans were using the issue to blunt the socialist movement’s growing influence ahead of the midterm elections.
Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old Democratic Socialist, defeated Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado in Tuesday’s primary election, ending the Denver congresswoman’s nearly three-decade hold on the seat.
The Associated Press called the race just after 10 p.m. and Kiros emerged to raucous applause for her victory speech. “Denver voters of all ages, of all races, of all religions sent a clear message: We will not wait!” she exclaimed.
Host Margaret Hoover of PBS’s “Firing Line,” asked Kiros how she addressed criticism that some DSA members, including roughly half of its national leadership, identify as communists.
“Yeah. Well, some members of the Democratic Party are proudly proclaiming themselves as capitalists, and it’s a big tent, right?” Kiros said.
“No, I’m not a communist,” Kiros said softly when directly asked by Hoover.
“Until a self-proclaimed communist actually wins an election, then it’s just noise from the Republican Party. There’s no one who’s actually winning with that.”
Kiros attributed the Republican attacks to concern that the DSA’s economic message was gaining support among voters.
Her policy positions center on economic populism. As a progressive candidate backed by the DSA and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Kiros pledged to reject corporate PAC donations, end U.S. military aid to Israel, abolish ICE, support the Green New Deal, and a nationwide moratorium on data centers.
“Those are basic needs that we should have in a modern world and especially in a country that is as wealthy and as powerful as this one. That’s not a limitation of resources. It’s a limitation of political will,” she told Ryan Warner, senior host of Colorado Matters, in an interview last month.
In an interview, Kiros said “It’s time for leadership that is actually committed to addressing the structural issues that have prevented working families from being able to thrive in our society.”
“We’re demanding a new kind of politics,” Kiros told outlets. “Not just for the sake of it, but because that’s the only way you can actually have a functioning democracy.”
Melat Kiros was born in 1997 in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and moved with her family to Colorado as an infant and was raised in the Denver area.
She became a lawyer after earning her law degree from the University of Notre Dame in 2022. In 2023, Kiros wrote an article defending pro-Palestinian students and criticizing law firms’ responses to student activism after the Hamas terror attack on Israel.
After being asked to take down the article, Kiros refused, and she was fired a day later from Sidley Austin, one of the biggest law firms in the U.S. She then became a PhD student while working as a barista to cover her living expenses.
Melat Kiros frames her victory as a mandate for structural political reform rather than a rejection of her predecessor, Diana DeGette.
Kiros’ view on Israel, however, has drawn significant controversy and internal movement debate. Far-left Colorado congressional candidate Melat Kiros backtracked on Sunday from her conciliatory tone in a PBS interview on the need for progressives to formulate a policy on Israel that does not engage in antisemitism.
Responding on Sunday to criticism on X from Al Jazeera producer Sana Saeed, Kiros said she “fumbled this line, plain and simple.” “To be clear, my foreign policy priority is ending Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine. I also reject the notion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and it’s important that we distinguish the two in order to combat actual antisemitism,” she continued.
During an interview with PBS’s “Firing Line” released on Friday, Democratic U.S. House nominee Melat Kiros responded to the history of socialism, paired with Communism ending in mass death by saying that “the historical record is also one that doesn’t show the full story as well, right? Our country has a long and storied history of intervening and trying to prevent any kind of government that was trying to deliver back more power to working people from succeeding in any meaningful way.”
With her victory over Rep. Diana DeGette, 29-year-old Melat Kiros is the second democratic socialist to beat an incumbent progressive Democratic House member this month.
Kiros’ victory in Colorado marks another massive win for the Democratic Socialists of America, coming just a week after two DSA-endorsed candidates won their Democratic primary contests for House races in New York City. Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, narrowly defeated five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat, 71, the current chair of the powerful Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
In the months ahead and in her potential first term, she expects to focus instead on building relationships with the Colorado delegation and local leaders in Denver, as well as pushing for bipartisan legislation on issues like transit.
In the viral moment that led to Friday’s remarks, Kiros and other insurgent DSA candidates challenged the Democratic Party’s established order during primary elections in late June. Anti-establishment progressives saw off some seasoned office-holders in Democratic primary contests in the US state of Colorado on Tuesday, as the party struggles with an internal battle over how far to the left it can shift. The big surprise of the night was the defeat in Colorado’s first district of incumbent member of the House of Representatives Progressive Caucus Dianna DeGette by a 29-year-old labour rights activist and lawyer, Melat Kiros. Only a few dozen people were on hand when Melat Kiros took the stage in a small auditorium in west Denver in mid-May to explain why she’d chosen to launch her long-shot campaign for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. After being fired from her job as a corporate attorney for writing an open letter supportive of student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza in late 2023, Kiros enrolled in a Ph.D. program in her hometown of Denver and tried to find a calling in public policy.
Colorado’s 1st Congressional District covers the dark blue city of Denver, and Kiros is expected to win in November and reach Congress in January.