Colorado has never sent a Black woman to Congress. On Nov. 3, Melat Kiros, 29, won Colorado’s 1st Congressional District with 78.3% of the vote, in the same election that sent Black women to statewide offices across the country.
Kiros was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, weeks before her father won a U.S. visa lottery, and grew up in Denver, where her parents worked several jobs. She is also the first member of Gen Z Colorado has elected to Congress and, by her own description, its first democratic socialist. The district is the one Diana DeGette held for 15 terms, since 1997.
The general election was never close. The hard race was in June, when Kiros beat DeGette in the Democratic primary, 49.3% to 43.5%. She ran with endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Justice Democrats on Medicare for All, restoring the SNAP and Medicaid cuts, and rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy.
She says volunteers won it. “Everyone here, all these volunteers, 8,000 volunteers that knocked on over 100,000 doors and made over 500,000 phone calls,” she told Denver7 on election night. Of the win itself she said: “It feels surreal. It feels like a moment in history right now that we’re living through.”
Her campaign also called for reevaluating U.S.-Israel relations, a position that drew fire from critics in the primary. Voters in a safely Democratic Denver district heard it and chose her anyway.
Her reading of the moment is a political one. “The American people are seeing the crisis in our economy and understanding that capitalism has a lot to answer for,” she said. On health care, she told NewsOne that her job in Washington is to show colleagues that Medicare for All “is also the pragmatic thing to do, if we want to beat back fascism.”
Her win is part of a record. At least 18 Black women will hold statewide elective executive office after Tuesday, up from the previous high of 11, and Georgia elected the country’s first Black woman governor. Kiros is a first of a different kind: an African immigrant’s daughter, young, poor as a child and openly of the left, in a House that Democrats now control.
For Black readers, the stake is plain: a Black woman who campaigned on health coverage and food assistance, and who beat the incumbent rather than waiting for the seat, now votes on the cuts that fall hardest on Black families. Democratic voters in Denver asked for exactly that.
Kiros takes the oath when the new Congress convenes in January.
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