Colorado's socialist surge shakes up the Democratic establishment

Democratic socialist candidate Melat Kiros shocked Colorado’s Democratic establishment when she defeated 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in the state's June primary. The double-digit win exposed a growing rift over the party's values that has left some Democrats stunned and questioning the future of the party.

"If you had told me this woman would have won by 13 points, I would have bet my house against that," Doug Friednash, a veteran political strategist in Colorado, told Fox News Digital. "I never would have thought we would have seen a victory of that magnitude here in Denver."

Friednash has tracked Colorado's political shift from red to deep blue over the past three decades, previously serving in the state legislature representing House District 10 in Denver. He later served as Denver city attorney and chief of staff to former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, and he currently works as a partner at Brownstein, a prominent legal and lobbying firm in the region.

Kiros' victory was one of dozens of wins for far-left candidates in Democratic primary elections this cycle as socialists continue to ascend across the country. The far-left's rise in the party has alarmed seasoned Democrats like Friednash.

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"It was one thing watching this happen in New York ... But when it happens in a state like Colorado, which is really the gateway to the West, it tells me that this issue is going to spread and may be a cancer to the Democratic Party if they don't figure out what our values are," Friednash said.

He noted that Kiros' victory did not happen in a vacuum, pointing out that DSA-backed candidates have successfully captured seats in the state legislature and city councils over the past few years.

While Friednash originally predicted Rep. Diana DeGette would win, he acknowledged Kiros' campaign had a strong ground game and was able to tap into anti-establishment sentiments among progressives in the region. Kiros' team reportedly knocked on more than 100,000 voters' doors and ran a phone bank reaching 500,000 people leading up to election night.

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She also campaigned on fighting for universal healthcare, affordable housing, utilities and more.

Friednash said Kiros' message resonated with younger voters who are frustrated by the high cost of living and feel let down by the Democratic establishment.

"I think the number one issue is affordability, by far," he said. "A lot of younger people that have moved to Denver have come here wanting to buy a house. They can't buy a home, it seems unaffordable and unattainable. And I think she's tapped into a lot of voter anger and hostility over things not being better."

He believes Denver has become a microcosm of the national debate taking place within the Democratic Party over its future direction. Comparing the DSA wave to the rise of the MAGA movement within the Republican Party, Friednash warned that if party leadership refuses to call out the group's extreme policies, it will ultimately hurt Democrats in swing districts across the nation.

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"As I look out at what's happening within the Democratic Party, you know, it's kind of like a ship without a captain," Friednash said. "A lot of the more mainstream Democrats, rather than trying to say, 'Here are the issues we should be fighting about,' are embracing the socialists, because I think they're afraid of them... much like I think we've seen with the MAGA movement."

"While some Democrats may be falling in love with socialism, you know who isn't? The rest of America," he continued. "That dog's not gonna hunt in these more competitive primaries."

Prominent centrist Democratic groups such as Third Way share that anxiety. The organization recently told The New York Times it plans to launch a $15 million campaign to combat the Democratic Socialists of America movement, which it believes poses a "mortal danger" to Democrats and will hurt the party in potential presidential swing states.

Concerns over the party's ideological turn aren't limited to establishment Democrats.

Jon Caldara, president of the Denver-based free-market think tank Independence Institute, also questions the future of his home state as democratic socialists continue to rise in prominence.

"Without a doubt, the Democratic Party in Colorado has changed," Caldara told Fox News Digital, arguing the state has abandoned its historically pro-business stance.

Caldara, a libertarian and longtime radio host and columnist, is outspoken about the challenges facing Denver and the broader state, such as affordability, homelessness and an exodus of businesses. He believes these issues will worsen, warning that establishment Democrats have lost control of their own party.

"When the state started turning left, this machine was so powerful, it really couldn't stop itself," Caldara said. "And now it's really beginning to eat their own. It's kind of a French Revolution thing that you see that the Democratic Party here in Colorado is now well out over their skis. And there is a growing fight between Democrats and socialists."

"The real telltale is that Democrats are afraid to speak the truth because they don't want to get canceled," he added. "It is vicious to go against the socialists."

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Caldara believes younger voters are increasingly being drawn to democratic socialist candidates in Denver and across the country because they lack historical context for how these types of policies have fared across the world.

"Sadly, the young suffer from a terrible disease: It's called youth. And because they're young, they haven't seen failed socialism around the globe," Caldara said. "They haven't seen what happened in the Soviet Union. They haven't learned the lesson of Sweden, which looked like such a wonderful socialist paradise until it didn't work, and now they're turning into a capitalist system. They haven't seen this."

"So the idea that we can just redistribute rich guys' money sounds great," he continued. "We'll just do rent control. We'll do government funding. We all know how that's going to end up. It's going to end up poorly. And young people are going to be hurt."

"I'm sad that they want to run this experiment again," he added. "And it's even sadder that it's happening in this beautiful free state, this western state, this pro-free-enterprise state of Colorado."

Longtime Colorado residents like Gene Maine understand full well why socialist policies are appealing. But having fled the Soviet Union as a teenager in 1981, Maine sees unsettling parallels between the society he grew up in and the direction Denver is headed.

As a child, Maine said he was often told that America, Western Europe and capitalism were evil. But as he got older, he realized the utopian society he was supposedly living in wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.

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"As I grew older, I started recognizing that, ‘Oh my God, I'm being lied to. We're all being lied to," Maine recalled. "This is not the freest society in the world. It's a jail."

After defecting from the USSR with his mother as a teenager, Maine lived in Los Angeles before settling in Erie, Colorado in the 1990s, where he’s lived since, raising his family and working as an engineer.

Over the past three decades, Maine has watched Denver change from a small "cow town" into a large municipality, and witnessed a corresponding political shift as the population boomed.

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"All of a sudden, it wasn't, 'Can we have the smallest government possible and leave us alone?' It became, 'Well, we need to give you free stuff.' And that's when I started to worry a little bit," Maine said.

Maine isn't surprised that veteran Democrats are facing primary threats from the far left, noting that Kiros’ campaign benefited from a well-organized ground game and sweeping promises on healthcare and affordability that drew in younger voters.

"She is winning the primary because we have an organized group convincing people that they can have free stuff. You can have free medical care. You can have free supermarkets. You can have free transportation. And it's very appealing," Maine explained. "I like free stuff, but what they forget to tell you is that nothing is really free. As they say, there's no free lunch."

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He believes historical lessons are being lost as generations grow further removed from the realities of the Soviet Union.

"So there is a gap that's being exploited," he continued. "And it's been exploited from internal and from external, because there's a lot of evil forces in the world that do not want America to succeed."

While critics view the rise of the DSA as a dangerous departure from American values, Kiros and other DSA candidates argue their policies are a pragmatic response to liberal voters fed up with how the Democratic Party has responded to their struggles.

Kiros recently brushed aside concerns regarding communists inside the DSA faction of the Democratic Party, telling PBS’s "Firing Line" host Margaret Hoover that there is room in the party for various viewpoints.

"Yeah. Well, some members of the Democratic Party are proudly proclaiming themselves as capitalists, and it’s a big tent, right?" Kiros said. "But again, at the end of the day, it’s up to the voters, right?"

"Until a self-proclaimed communist actually wins an election, then it’s just noise from the Republican Party. There’s no one who’s actually winning with that," she continued.

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Kiros denied being a communist herself, arguing that younger voters are embracing the DSA message because, at its core, it represents "economic populism."

Her campaign centered on Medicare for all, universal childcare, investments in public housing, higher federal taxes on the wealthy, publicly owned utilities and more. Like many other socialist campaigns across the country, she is also firmly anti-Israel.

Kiros' campaign was backed by several progressive groups, including the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Justice Democrats, and the Working Families Party.

Republican candidate Christy Peterson, a local accountant, is also running in the Nov. 3 general election, which Kiros is widely expected to win given the district's strongly blue lean. In 2024, Kamala Harris won 77 percent of the vote in the district en route to winning Colorado.

Kiros’s campaign and the DSA did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.