Melat Kiros’s win follows victories from three Zohran Mamdani-backed challengers in New York
Far-left House challenger Melat Kiros, a socialist who called both the Oct. 7 and Sept. 11 terror attacks “inevitable,” unseated Rep. Diana DeGette, who has represented Denver for nearly 30 years. The result comes on the heels of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist sweep in New York City’s congressional primaries and shows that left-wing radicalism is not confined to the East Coast.
Kiros was leading DeGette by nearly 6 points with 78 percent of the vote counted when the Associated Press called the race Wednesday just after midnight. Her victory comes a week after a slew of socialists, all backed by Mamdani, swept the primaries in the Big Apple. Like in New York, Kiros will almost certainly secure the House seat, which hasn’t had a Republican representative in over 50 years, in November.
Besides her socialist identity, Kiros shares another characteristic with the Mamdani-backed House candidates: She’s an outspoken anti-Israel activist. She called Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack “an inevitable consequence of apartheid, of occupation, decades of occupation” during a May interview with Hasan Piker, the anti-American streamer who has said “America deserved 9/11.”
The remark prompted a reporter for Denver’s NBC affiliate, Kyle Clark, to ask Kiros if she believed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks “were the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.” Kiros said they were.
“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” she replied. “And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to getting rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place.”
Kiros, like her New York counterparts Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, attacked her opponent’s establishment bona fides. When three venues abruptly canceled a rally she was holding with Piker, she accused DeGette of calling on “her donor class to silence us.” DeGette denied the claim and said Kiros was “free to make her own mistakes” like “campaigning with an infamous anti-semite.”
The socialist candidate has embraced a bevy of left-wing policies, like abolishing ICE, releasing “anybody and everybody” in ICE detention, a $22 minimum wage, and Medicare for All. She’s enjoyed support from a who’s who of left-wing figures and organizations, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Justice Democrats, Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement, Piker, and, most recently, the “children’s educator” Ms. Rachel.
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