A 29-year-old Democratic Socialist, Melat Kiros, has decisively unseated an incumbent representative who’s been in Congress longer than Kiros has been alive. She campaigned on a message of affordability, Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and supporting universal childcare, and was backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a slew of progressive groups like DSA, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement, Jewish Voices For Peace, Everytown Gun Safety and dozens of others.
“We already have socialism,” Kiros said before the election. “It’s in our streets. It’s in our public schools. It’s in our fire stations. What we’re fighting for is to extend that kind of guarantee and that security into our healthcare, into our housing, into our childcare and our elder care.”
With 93% of the vote in, Kiros led the 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette by almost 10 points: 51.3-41.7%. The decisive victory came despite $1.3 million in outside Super Pac spending attacking her in the last two months of the campaign.
“The ‘any Democrat will do’ era is over,” it says on her website. “When I spoke out against the genocide in Gaza, powerful people told me to stay silent or it would cost me my job. I didn’t back down. Now I’ll do the same in Congress.”
Kiros was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and her parents immigrated to America when she was an infant. She was fired from a New York law firm in 2023 after publishing an open letter defending university students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. She returned to Denver and became a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs before deciding to run for Congress last year.
The seat is safely Democratic, so she will become the first Gen-Z woman elected to Congress next November.