A 29-year-old democratic socialist endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders held a lead over a nearly three-decade congressional incumbent in Denver on Tuesday night, as Colorado's Democratic primaries delivered fresh evidence that the party's progressive wing is gaining ground far beyond its New York City strongholds.
Melat Kiros, a first-time candidate and former attorney, led Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado's 1st Congressional District with an estimated 65 percent of the vote counted, the Associated Press reported. DeGette has held the Denver seat for nearly 30 years. Kiros had already received more than double DeGette's votes at the March Democratic assembly, where the incumbent barely qualified for the primary ballot.
The results arrived just days after democratic socialists and progressives toppled establishment-backed Democrats, including two sitting incumbents, in New York congressional primaries. Together, the two nights suggest the leftward lurch inside the Democratic Party is no longer a coastal curiosity. It is a national pattern.
DeGette's argument was straightforward: experience matters, especially now. She contended that her tenure in Congress was needed to combat the Trump administration. Colorado's established Democratic House delegation backed her.
Voters appeared unpersuaded. Kiros accused DeGette of ineffectiveness and ran as a democratic socialist with Sanders's endorsement. That endorsement carried weight. Sanders declared on June 3 that "progressives are on the march," a statement that looks less like boasting and more like a factual summary of recent primary results.
University of Colorado Regent Wanda James also ran in the CD-1 primary, potentially splitting the anti-DeGette vote. Even so, Kiros held a lead with roughly two-thirds of ballots tallied. A final result had not been called at the time of reporting.
The socialist sweep in New York the previous week set the stage. In Colorado, the question was whether the same energy would travel west, and the early answer from Denver was yes.
Sen. John Hickenlooper, the more centrist former governor, fended off state Sen. Julie Gonzales in the U.S. Senate primary. Gonzales, a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America, characterized Hickenlooper as an "incrementalist", a word that, in today's progressive vocabulary, functions as an insult.
Hickenlooper, who noted he had never lost an election, posted a victory video to YouTube:
"Coloradoans have once again made their voices clear. We are not going to accept Trump's broken promises and cost of living emergency, or his constant corruption."
Hickenlooper won. But the fact that a sitting U.S. senator faced a serious primary challenge from a self-described insurgent progressive, and had to fight for it, tells you where the energy in the Democratic base resides. It is not in the center.
In Colorado's 8th Congressional District, state Rep. Manny Rutinel defeated state Rep. Shannon Bird. The AP described Rutinel as having a "more progressive record" and Bird as having "a more moderate record in the Legislature."
The district matters. It is relatively new, stretches from Denver's northern suburbs through farming country, is heavily Hispanic, and is poorer than much of the rest of the state. It is also a highly competitive swing district currently held by Republican Rep. Gabe Evans.
Rutinel argued that his personal story and a more aggressive economic agenda would be more potent against Evans in November. His victory speech leaned into aspiration rather than ideology:
"This is the moment for all the kids out there who had the deck stacked against them. I'm going to work with everything I have so that those kids have the same opportunities to live out the American Dream that I did."
The rhetoric sounds moderate. The record, by the AP's description, is progressive. Whether that combination can win a swing district against a Republican incumbent is a question November will answer. Democrats chose the candidate further to the left.
The pattern echoes what Sen. John Fetterman warned about after the New York results, that the party is drifting in a direction that may thrill activists but alienate the voters it needs in competitive races.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser won the Democratic governor's primary over U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. The race featured a revealing exchange of attacks: Weiser hit Bennet for voting for Trump nominees, while Bennet fired back that Weiser had failed to join state lawsuits against the first Trump administration.
In other words, both candidates competed over who had resisted Trump more aggressively. That is the Democratic primary electorate in Colorado in a single frame.
Weiser, who became attorney general in 2019 and previously served in the presidential administrations of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, is considered the favorite to defeat the Republican nominee and succeed term-limited Gov. Jared Polis. The GOP primary featured state Rep. Scott Bottoms, described as further right, state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, characterized as the more conventional Republican, and Victor Marx, described as a wild card candidate. The Republican winner had not been identified in the AP's reporting.
Bennet, for his part, did not resign his U.S. Senate seat to run for governor. He will continue serving in the Senate, a detail that suggests he understood the risk.
Colorado's results do not exist in isolation. The Washington Examiner reported that the New York primary night saw Mamdani-backed candidate Brad Lander defeat incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman by nearly 32 points, making Goldman the fifth sitting House member to lose renomination this year. Left-wing organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier upset Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Adriano Espaillat despite heavy establishment spending to save him.
Chevalier's campaign message was blunt: "Where is our congressman when ICE is kidnapping his constituents? Why should we let Adriano Espaillat vote to spend billions on bombs overseas when we're struggling to afford rent and groceries right here in New York City?"
The trend has been compared to the Tea Party movement within the GOP, a grassroots insurgency that rewired a party's internal power structure. Whether that comparison flatters or frightens Democrats depends on which faction you ask.
The calls from figures like James Carville for Democrats to formally break with socialists have so far gone unheeded. Instead, party leadership has moved to accommodate the winners.
That accommodation has drawn its own criticism. House Republicans have seized on the dynamic, arguing that the Democratic caucus is being remade in the image of its most left-wing members, not by leadership choice, but by voter demand that leadership lacks the will to resist.
Four races. Four signals pointing the same direction. A 29-year-old socialist leading a 30-year incumbent. A centrist senator forced to fight off an insurgent progressive. A swing-district primary won by the more progressive candidate. A governor's race decided by who opposed Trump more loudly.
The common thread is not complicated. Democratic primary voters in Colorado, like their counterparts in New York, are choosing candidates who promise to go further left, faster. The establishment candidates who survived did so narrowly or by adopting the insurgents' language.
For Republicans, the question is whether this leftward shift creates opportunities in November, particularly in swing districts like CD-8. For Democrats, the question is whether a party increasingly shaped by its activist base can hold the middle ground it needs in general elections.
The March Democratic assembly in Colorado offered an early warning. DeGette barely qualified for the ballot. Kiros more than doubled her. The establishment saw the numbers and backed DeGette anyway. As of Tuesday night, that bet was losing.
When a party's primary voters keep choosing the furthest-left option on the ballot, in New York, in Colorado, race after race, it stops being a series of upsets and starts being a direction. The Democratic Party's base is telling its leaders exactly where it wants to go. The leaders just don't seem to want to hear it.
