Despite all the dark money being spent to quash anti-establishment electoral uprisings in the 2026 primary cycle, a number of progressive congressional candidates have overcome the odds. As the Prospect reported, progressivism threw a wrench in New York’s machine politics last week when a slate of DSA- and Mamdani-backed candidates, including former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, New York Assemblymember Claire Valdez, and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, prevailed over establishment choices and two incumbents.
Another closely watched House primary is taking place halfway across the country today. Thirty-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), understood to be in line for a leadership role after the 2026 general election as the top Democrat on a critical congressional subcommittee overseeing health care, faces her first-ever serious primary challenge for the First Congressional District from a candidate who wasn’t born when she first entered office.
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Melat Kiros is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in public affairs at the University of Colorado Denver and holds a law degree from the University of Notre Dame. In 2023, Kiros had a few years working as a lawyer at high-powered Sidley Austin in New York City. At that time, she made the bold decision to publicly criticize numerous law firms, including her own, for signing a letter that conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Her dissent came at a steep price, as Kiros was subsequently fired.
Now, the 29-year-old progressive insurgent hopes to topple a political dynasty. Kiros secured 63 percent of a preliminary intraparty vote at the Denver Democrats’ county assembly in March. It was an unprecedented blow to DeGette, who received just 32 percent of the vote, barely enough to qualify for today’s ballot.
More importantly, a recent Data for Progress poll shows Kiros leading DeGette by five points. The progressive super PACs backing Kiros, Justice Democrats and American Priorities, commissioned the survey.
Outside interests have poured approximately $1.3 million into the race in a frantic bid to prevent the incumbent from losing her seat.
The results differed markedly from those of a separate poll conducted by Data for Progress earlier this year. Support for DeGette has since fallen to 36 percent from 40 percent, while support for Kiros has surged to 41 percent from 7 percent.
With DeGette’s favorability declining, outside interests have poured approximately $1.3 million into the race in a frantic bid to prevent the incumbent from losing her seat. It’s a familiar story of big-money special interests dragging flailing incumbents over the line. As Drop Site reported, these interests include AIPAC (through a shell PAC called Pro-Choice Majority that has received funding from AIPAC’s affiliate United Democracy Project) and Big Tech (through a PAC called Project 218, funded largely by Silicon Valley donors).
But for a third super PAC supporter, we don’t know who wants DeGette to win—and we may never know.
A pop-up super PAC called Mile High Accountability Project has spent $350,000 on digital ads attacking Kiros. According to a complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) on June 25, the PAC allegedly failed to properly disclose its donors “despite clear federal requirements to do so,” among other alleged violations of campaign finance law. The super PAC did not file a pre-primary report, and its only independent expenditure (IE) disclosure was “riddled with errors,” CLC stated in its complaint. That matters because Colorado voters remain in the dark about who’s spending big to influence their vote, and why.
“The impact is that it makes it difficult to look at this report and apply it to the real world,” said Shanna Ports, CLC’s senior legal counsel for campaign finance. “It makes it difficult to follow the money.”
On June 26, Mile High Accountability Project hastily filed the missing pre-primary report, submitting it over a week after the applicable deadline. The super PAC also amended its IE disclosure, but the new version still contains errors. For instance, Mile High Accountability Project classified its disclosure as a “24-hour report” despite the fact that the 24-hour reporting period for the Colorado primary had not yet opened, meaning the disclosure fell within Colorado’s 48-hour reporting period for IE disclosures. And while the stated purpose of the digital ads was to support DeGette, they overwhelmingly focus on opposing Kiros rather than outright boosting the incumbent.
The pre-primary report reveals that most of the super PAC’s funding comes from a 501(c)(4) known as the U.S. Accountability Project, which is not required to disclose its donors. However, the report did show that the American Association for Justice PAC contributed $20,000 to the Mile High Accountability Project. That is a PAC funded by trial lawyers.
An unknown PAC funded primarily by unknown donors makes informed choices about who is funding elections nearly impossible. “Voters want to know who’s behind ads so they can think about the claims that are in the ads, and think about what interests might be motivating the ads,” Ports told the Prospect. “That helps them decide if they’re going to take the claims at face value, or if they’re going to take them with a grain of salt.”
KIROS HAS WORKED ON CAMPAIGNS BEFORE, but as a congressional candidate, she has encountered hurdles that make it increasingly difficult for working-class candidates to build a foundation of support.
In an interview with the Prospect, Kiros pointed out that DeGette has called for the overturning of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Citizens United while continuing to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations, namely pharmaceutical companies and health insurers like Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, Cencora/AmerisourceBergen, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association PAC. Small donors account for less than 4 percent of DeGette’s career fundraising total; 64 percent of that total has come from corporate PACs. DeGette claims she will introduce Medicare for All in the subcommittee she could chair next year, but given her support from the health industry, what the bill would look like is very unclear.
“If it’s not the people that are putting you into office,” Kiros said, “then you’re not going to be holding yourself accountable to the people.”
To counter the grassroots vitality powering her candidacy, the DeGette campaign has resorted to disparaging Kiros, using a so-called “red box” to highlight controversial statements and Kiros’s recent return to Denver from New York. These messages aren’t necessarily meant for the public to read, but for super PACs; they are a way candidates coordinate with outside groups even though federal election law forbids it. The messages DeGette has on the website have made their way into super PAC ads attacking Kiros.
It’s a textbook demonstration of how the establishment center-left in America is trying to deal with a shifting political landscape that is increasingly hostile to them.
The primary is shaping up to be a fascinating yardstick as to the seriousness and ferocity of progressive anti-establishment backlash within the Democratic electorate. A Kiros victory would suggest that even voters outside New York City, with no connection to the allegedly spellbinding Zohran Mamdani, are seeing through the noise—an alarming scenario for a party establishment in decline.
“Anybody who ever asks for support, regardless of party, regardless of level of office, the new litmus test if we have any hope of taking back our party from these special interests is to make sure that we are not putting anybody into office who is taking money from these organizations or from these corporations,” Kiros told the Prospect.
