Colorado's Democratic establishment faces a reckoning Tuesday as progressive challengers look to oust party veterans — and one leading insurgent won't call a firebombing of Jewish Americans what it was. The results will tell working-class voters whether the left's internal purge accelerates or stalls, with consequences for every competitive race down the ballot.
The marquee contest is in the Denver-based 1st District, where 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette faces the toughest race of her career against 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros, a lawyer endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and backed by Justice Democrats. A third candidate, University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, is also running.
Kiros hits DeGette for taking corporate PAC money and criticizes U.S. support for Israel. But she stumbled when asked about the firebombing of a Boulder group advocating for the release of Israeli hostages. The perpetrator told investigators he was driven by a desire "to kill all Zionist people." Kiros still refused to call it antisemitic.
"I don't know what was in the heart of the perpetrator," she told 9News. "All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed."
DeGette, for her part, is touting her progressive bona fides — abortion rights, Medicare for All, and defunding and dismantling ICE. "Now is not the time to gamble and send somebody with no experience to Washington," the 68-year-old congresswoman said at a recent debate. A 15-term incumbent running on dismantling ICE while warning against "gambling" is quite the pitch.
Kiros is building on momentum from last week's New York primaries, where Justice Democrat Darializa Avila Chevalier ousted the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair despite scrutiny over controversial posts. Avila Chevalier has encouraged Denver voters to back Kiros in the final stretch.
Meanwhile, the governor's race has been upended by the Trump administration. Sen. Michael Bennet had long been the clear frontrunner to succeed term-limited Gov. Jared Polis. But Trump's pressure campaign against Colorado — moving Space Command headquarters, attempting to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, denying disaster declarations, and vetoing funding for a drinking water pipeline — has reshaped the race around the question of who can fight the president effectively.
Polis himself stirred anger in his own party by reducing the prison sentence of convicted election denier Tina Peters at Trump's urging.
Both outlets framed the Colorado primaries as a referendum on how Democrats should oppose Trump. What neither much dwelled on is the deeper pattern: a party machine that keeps losing ground to the right is now consumed with purging its own moderates, while candidates who can't identify antisemitic terrorism when it announces itself get treated as serious contenders for federal office.
The open question is whether Democratic voters in a state the party has dominated will choose experience or ideology — and whether a movement that can't condemn firebombings will prove electable beyond the primary.
