Melat Kiros, 29-year-old Democrat, wins election to Congress

Denver voters on Tuesday elected Melat Kiros, 29-year-old former attorney and democratic socialist, as the congressional representative from Colorado’s 1st District.

The Associated Press called the race at about 7:30 p.m. Kiros led with 78% of the vote, ahead of Republican Christy Peterson with 14% and unaffiliated candidate Shimon Blau with 6%.

Kiros is the first self-identified socialist and the first Black woman to be elected to Congress in Colorado history, and the second-youngest woman, after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, to be elected to Congress from any state. Born in Ethiopia, she was raised in Denver after immigrating to the U.S. from Ethiopia with her parents at 11 months old.

Her victory in the 1st District, Colorado’s most heavily Democratic congressional district, was all but assured with her shock primary victory in June over longtime U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who took office in 1997 four months before Kiros was born. Kiros joins a nationwide wave this year of other left-wing insurgents with the backing of groups like Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America.

How democratic socialist Melat Kiros stunned Colorado politics with congressional primary win

Her election to Congress from Denver — where two-thirds of Democrats and two-thirds of all residents under age 35 hold a favorable view of socialism, a 2025 poll found — is by far the biggest win to date for local left-wing groups like the Denver chapter of the DSA, which has risen in stature over the last decade and elected a handful of other candidates to Denver City Council and the state Legislature.

Kiros has faced criticism from some fellow Democrats for her views on Israel, most notably when she declined to characterize the June 2025 firebombing attack in Boulder, which targeted a group aiming to raise awareness of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, as an act of antisemitism.

Shortly after her primary win, Shimon Blau, a Denver doctor, launched a campaign for the 1st District as an unaffiliated candidate, a decision motivated by what he called her “antisemitic rhetoric.” Blau qualified for the ballot after collecting the required 1,500 valid petition signatures.

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 Denver and took a job as a barista before launching her long-shot challenge against DeGette in July 2025.

Galvanized by her opposition to U.S. aid to Israel and support for progressive priorities like Medicare for All, Kiros’ small army of staff and volunteers powered a grassroots campaign that handed DeGette her first-ever defeat at the Denver Democratic assembly in March, nearly knocking the incumbent off the ballot before the primary had begun.

Kiros and her supporters railed against the pernicious influence of campaign spending by corporations and the rich, faulting DeGette, long considered the most left-leaning member of Colorado’s congressional delegation, for accepting corporate PAC money while failing to deliver progressive reforms.

This is a developing story and will be updated.