BREAKING: Progressives win more huge primary upsets
This time in Colorado
Welcome to a Tuesday night edition of Progress Report.
It’s election night — again — and I’m happy to report that a candidate you probably first heard about here at Progress Report is headed to Congress. More below!
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Another week, another earthquake upset in a Democratic primary.
Several, in fact.
Progressive Attorney General Phil Weiser defeated Sen. Michael Bennet in a hard-fought but not particularly close gubernatorial primary, putting him in position to succeed centrist libertarian Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. Bennet was seen as the favorite in this race, so much so that every other Democrat stepped aside when he announced his candidacy. Weiser decided not to defer and hit Bennet for a perceived softness on the Trump administration, including his votes to confirm several of the president’s cabinet nominees.
“For too many people, the Democratic Party doesn't show up, listen and fight for you. The view across Colorado, particularly rural communities, working class communities is I don't see you maybe other than election time. For me, this has been a challenge since I started running for office. I've gone to every single county in Colorado, all 64 counties, and I've gone there again and again,” Weiser said in a debate with Bennet earlier this month.
Disappointment in the party also shaped its marquee Congressional race.
Melat Kiros ousted 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in resounding fashion on Tuesday night, completing a once-unlikely upset against a lawmaker who first entered Congress months before the 29-year-old was born. A political newcomer, Kiros becomes the latest democratic socialist to unseat a long-time centrist incumbent in a primary season that shaped by the anger of Democratic voters.
Kiros worked as a lawyer in New York for several years before being fired for writing an op-ed in support of student protests against the genocide in Gaza. After returning to Colorado, where she grew up after her emigrating with her parents from Ethiopia when she was a baby, Kiros threw herself into politics, working for local campaigns. Dissatisfied with DeGette and eager to see her replace, Kiros launched her own campaign in the summer of 2025; the grassroots effort, backed by DSA and Justice Democrats, picked up momentum over the winter (Progress Report hosted her for a live stream in April) and was boosted late in the campaign by an endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders.
I spent most of the weekend working on a piece about her campaign for More Perfect Union, which you can watch below:
American support for Israel’s government has been one of several animating issues in her campaign, which has otherwise focused heavily on affordability, economic populism, and immigrant rights. A democratic socialist, Kiros is a vocal supporter of Medicare for All, universal childcare, and social housing, issues that she says DeGette has been reluctant to support or pursue.
“I have a lot of respect for the work [DeGette] has done on reproductive justice and environmental justice, but that work hasn't really been done in the last decade,” Kiros told us late last week. “And in that time she's also taken millions of dollars from big Pharma, big energy and oil, from defense contractors, and special interests like AIPAC. Denver is a city that voted for publicly financed elections, for term limits, for universal pre-K. So we deserve to have representatives that are fighting for that on the federal level.”
DeGette benefited from millions of dollars in late Super PAC spending from a bevy of special interests, including $2 million from AIPAC and Big Tech. More than $1.3 million was spent last week on ads that attacked Kiros as “divisive” and making misleading statements about her residency. Money poorly spent.
You can watch my longform interview with Kiros from April below:
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Fantastic news! Thanks for the report.
You rock! Kiros rocks also!