Socialist Momentum Grows as Melat Kiros Wins in Denver

Leftists toppled a three-decade incumbent they’d made the face of the Democratic Party’s failures on Tuesday in Denver amid an anti-establishment wave that has powered progressive and socialist midterm victories across the country.

Voters chose democratic socialist Melat Kiros, an attorney who lost her job for condemning her industry’s silence on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ahead of longtime Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat representing Denver who touted progressive positions on domestic issues but drew criticism that she had grown complacent over three decades in Congress and generally followed the party line on support for Israel.

DeGette’s defeat in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District brought more bad news for Democratic incumbents reeling after losses in New York last week. Party leaders are facing a surge in public frustration with their brand and a cascade of voters who say they don’t wield power effectively. Though some Democratic leaders have discounted those races and claimed that the ascendant candidates’ vision is out of step with the party’s base, leftists and progressives are continuing to notch wins under their noses as they take the battle over the future of the Democratic Party to the polls.

“In the last week, we have taken out 40 years of incumbency,” said Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which backed Kiros and two of the candidates who won in New York. 

Members of the Democratic establishment “hate that they can no longer simply spend unlimited sums of money to buy a seat in Congress, and we are truly proving that organized people power and mass movements can beat the money,” he said. “We’re just having an amazing fucking cycle.”

Kiros, who will face Republican Christy Peterson in November, is heavily favored to win in the solid Democratic district.

Anti-incumbent sentiment also came through in the tight Democratic race for governor, where the state attorney general framed himself as the choice against the establishment despite holding statewide office. Two-term Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser defeated sitting Sen. Michael Bennet after casting himself as outsider who went after President Donald Trump in court dozens of times and won — a fairly standard tactic for Democratic state attorneys general.

That’s not to say every race in Colorado was a warning sign for the establishment. In the statewide race for Senate, the incumbent safely kept his seat as progressive challenger Julie Gonzales fell short of ousting centrist Sen. John Hickenlooper. (Hickenlooper had refused to debate Gonzales and tried to thwart her run early in the race.)

Mixed Results in Key Districts

In the district encompassing Colorado Springs, Jessica Killin, an Army veteran and previous chief of staff to former second husband Doug Emhoff, easily beat Joe Reagan, a populist second-time candidate and fellow veteran. Killin had far outraised him with the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

Days before the 5th Congressional District primary, Killin pledged to sign onto a new pact from conservative House Democrats to promote capitalism, equating socialism with the right-wing MAGA movement and promising to fight both. Killin will face first-term incumbent GOP Rep. Jeff Crank, whose district the Cook Political Report changed from “solid” to “likely” Republican.

State Rep. Manny Rutinel, who has been described as a progressive but recently reneged on some of his policy pledges, meanwhile, beat a former state lawmaker backed by conservative Democrats’ Blue Dog PAC in the 8th District, rated a “toss up” and one of the DCCC’s “races in play” that could help determine control of the House. He’ll face freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans, who was ranked last summer as the most vulnerable incumbent in the country.

Rutinel campaigned in the heavily Latino district on fighting the “cruelty” of Trump’s immigration policy and attacked the record of his opponent, Shannon Bird, on the issue. He positioned himself as the candidate who would do more to rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Backed by the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rutinel backed off of some of his more left-leaning stances during his campaign, such as Medicare for All and opposing fracking. While he had reportedly been privately critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, he said he wouldn’t “boil it down to one word descriptors” and would support military aid to Israel. He ran without the support of the Working Families Party, which had previously endorsed him.

While Blue Dog-backed Bird had the institutional support of the centrist and party-aligned New Democrat Coalition Action Fund and EMILY’s List as well as the pro-Israel Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, Rutinel had the advantage in fundraising and dominated ad space. House Majority PAC — which is aligned with House Democratic leadership — has already reserved $6.1 million in ad reservations for the general election.

“Voters can see through the hollow words and platitudes of the corporate-backed candidates who have tried to hijack our working families-centered messaging during this campaign,” said Carlos Valverde, Southwest regional director for the Working Families Party. “People are tired of status-quo, do-nothing politics that protect the comfortable while working families struggle with housing, healthcare, wages, and basic dignity.”

In Denver, according to Andrabi, on-the-ground energy from the campaign’s supporters made the crucial difference. While DeGette received a last-minute infusion of super PAC money, the Kiros campaign “knocked 115,000 doors in this race, which is just insane.”