The group Justice Democrats is a progressive campaign finance reform organization that endorses candidates who refuse to accept donations from corporate PACs and lobbyists. This year, they are primarily running in states like New York, California, and Illinois, but one endorsed candidate is running in Colorado: Melat Kiros (she/her), a Gen Z former attorney. Melat was born in Ethiopia and immigrated with her family to the United States at the start of the Ethiopian-Eritrean War. In the middle of this campaign for US Congress, she is also working on a PhD in Public Affairs. A one-time barista who worried about making rent, Melat has first-hand experience as a working-class woman and brings that experience to her campaign, which is centered on Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, getting big money out of politics, housing as a human right, and holding AI companies accountable before they eliminate entire workforces without a safety net.

Where are you based?
I live in Denver, Colorado, and I didn't just land here for a campaign. I grew up here. My family built their lives here after immigrating from Tigray, Ethiopia, when I was just a baby. I went to Eaglecrest High School. After I was fired from my law firm in New York for speaking out about the genocide in Palestine, I moved back home, and I’ve been working at a local coffee shop while doing a PhD at CU Denver. The workers I'm fighting for, the rent increases I'm talking about, the neighbors I know who are being pushed out of places they've lived for decades, I see all of that up close, because I live it too.

What is your position/what position are you running for?
I'm running for U.S. Congress in Colorado's 1st Congressional District, Denver and the surrounding area, in the Democratic primary against Diana DeGette, who has held this seat for 30 years. CO-01 is one of the safest Democratic districts in the country, which means Denver voters have the rare opportunity to demand something better without risking Democratic power.

How would you briefly summarize your platform?
Everything I'm running on traces back to one root problem: corporate money has so thoroughly captured our politics that even well-meaning Democrats end up serving their donors instead of their constituents. That's why we don't have Medicare for All, even though the majority of Americans support it. That's why housing is unaffordable. That's why ICE terrorizes families in Denver while Congress looks the other way. That's why we're still writing blank checks to fund a genocide in Gaza.

So my platform starts with fixing the corruption, no corporate PAC money, ever, full stop, and builds from there. Medicare for All, because healthcare tied to your job is a tool of control. Abolish ICE and replace it with a humane, lawful immigration system. End U.S. funding of the genocide in Gaza. Housing First, not housing as a commodity, but housing as a right. Real accountability on AI and automation so workers aren't left behind. And structural reforms: term limits, lobbying transparency, Supreme Court reform, reversing Citizens United. Basic human needs shouldn't be something you have to earn, and the people making decisions about your life should actually have to live by the consequences of those decisions.

What inspired you to run?
In 2023, I was a corporate lawyer at one of the biggest law firms in the country. I wrote a piece on Medium criticizing law firms for opposing pro-Palestine protests and silencing lawyers who spoke out. I was fired the next day after refusing to take down the article.

What happened next changed everything. My inbox filled up with messages from other attorneys who said: I wish I could speak up, but I can't because if I lose this job, I lose the only thing keeping my family afloat.

That's when it stopped being abstract. The system isn't just broken, it's designed to keep people quiet. It ties your healthcare to your job, so you can't afford to speak up. It floods politics with corporate money so that even people who go to Washington with good intentions eventually answer to their donors instead of their voters.

I'm a recovering lawyer, a former barista, a renter, a first-gen immigrant, and a PhD student still carrying student debt. None of the people currently making decisions about my life have lived anything close to it. I decided that needed to change.

What change are you hoping to bring to your district and country?
For Denver specifically, I want constituents to actually be able to reach their representative. I want town halls, in person, unscripted. I want someone who picks up the phone, shows up at community meetings, and answers the hard questions. That sounds like a low bar, and it is, but it's a bar that hasn't been cleared in a long time.

Beyond that, I want Denver to have a congresswoman who brings urgency to this moment. We are living under oligarchy right now, not the threat of it, the reality of it. Corporations have a 72% chance of getting the legislation they want passed. Ordinary citizens, even with 70% of Americans behind them on an issue, have only a 30% chance of success. That's not a democracy. And the only way to change it is to elect people who refuse to be part of the broken system.

For the country, I want to be part of a wave of accountability primaries that forces the Democratic Party to reckon with why it keeps losing. Democrats lost the last election because voters stopped trusting us to actually fight for them. The answer isn't to move right. The answer is to deliver Medicare for All, housing, childcare, real immigration reform, and give people something to vote for. If we do that, the scapegoating stops working. The next Trump doesn't have anything to point to. That's the long game.

What do you consider to be your major accomplishments so far?
This is my first run for office, and I own that. I'm not coming to you with a decade of votes to point to, which also means I'm not coming with a decade of compromises, corporate donations, and missed opportunities to explain away. What I do bring is a career built in service of this work. I know how the system operates from the inside and I know what it looks like when it's designed to fail people. As an organizer, I've shown up for my community in Denver, including the Ethiopian diaspora community that raised me. As a barista, I worked alongside tipped minimum wage workers and understood in my body, not just my policy platform, what it means to not have enough. And I think getting fired for speaking the truth and deciding to run anyway says something about what kind of representative I'd be.

What do you feel are the most important issues right now, why, and how do you plan to tackle them?
First, healthcare. People are dying because they can't afford insulin. They're going bankrupt from emergency room bills. They're staying in jobs they hate or staying quiet when they should speak up because losing their job means losing their health coverage. Medicare for All is the solution, and it's actually three things at once: universal coverage through Medicare expansion, breaking up healthcare monopolies to drive costs down through competition, and canceling all medical debt. All three have to happen. The insurance middleman exists solely to extract profit from the system. Every dollar that goes to a claims adjuster denying your coverage is a dollar not going to your care.

Second, housing. Denver has been in a housing crisis for years and the response from Washington has been nothing. I'm the only candidate in this race calling for Housing First by name which is the only evidence-backed model that actually eradicates homelessness. It requires three things: no-strings-attached housing (you can't rebuild your life without stable shelter first), a federal commitment to building millions of new units, and bringing current residents into the development process so communities shape their own future. Finland did this and ended chronic homelessness. We can too.

Third, corruption. Everything else runs through this. My opponent takes 64% of her donations from corporate PACs. Less than 4% comes from small-dollar donors. That's not a coincidence, that's why she's voted the way she has. I will never take a corporate PAC dollar, and I won't vote for any Democrat in a leadership position who does. It's the minimum requirement for actually fighting for people.

How would you hope to bridge the divide with your constituents to better unite Americans?
A lot of the division we're experiencing is manufactured by the algorithms. It serves the oligarchy for us to be fighting each other over culture war issues while the same corporations are picking everyone's pockets. When you strip away the noise and ask people what they actually want, there's more agreement than our political discourse would suggest. People want healthcare they can afford. They want to own a home or afford their rent. They want their kids to have good schools. They want clean water. These aren't partisan positions. The reason we don't have these things isn't because Americans disagree; it's because the people we've elected answer to donors who profit from the status quo.

My approach to bridging the divide is to be honest about that, and to meet people where they are. I’ll hold town halls. I’ll show up to community meetings. I’ll talk to people who didn't vote for me, and I'll listen first. I will never write off any Denver neighborhood or constituency. Most people don't care whether something is "progressive" or "moderate." They care whether it makes their lives better.

I'm running because the system of corporate money corrupts even well-intentioned people without them fully realizing it. When you stop being able to imagine your constituents' lives, when you're traveling between Aspen fundraisers and DC hearings and you haven't worked a job that didn't come with health insurance in three decades, you lose the thing that makes you effective.

How do you see your unique identity and background as an asset to you in office?
I came to this country as an infant. My family left Tigray, Ethiopia in 1998 and rebuilt their lives in Denver from the ground up. My father had a veterinary degree from Ethiopia, a credential this country didn't recognize. He was told to start over. He worked multiple jobs, did what was asked of him, and built a life anyway. The promise he believed in was that if you came here and worked hard and shared the belief that everyone deserves dignity, this country would give you a chance. I watched him live that promise even when the system made it harder than it should have been.

That experience is in everything I do. I understand what it means to be an immigrant in this country right now, not theoretically, but personally. I know people in Denver who are afraid to leave their houses because of ICE. I understand the Diversity Visa lottery program, because that's how my father came here. When I call for abolishing ICE, it's not a bumper sticker. It's personal.

What is your motto in life?
"If it ever comes to standing up for the people or standing up for the party, I'm always going to stand up for the people."

I mean that. I got fired for saying what I believed. I'm running against the establishment of my own party. I've been told my positions are too bold, that I should soften my edges, that I should take the safe path. I keep coming back to this: you cannot participate in democracy when you're worried about making rent, when you're one medical bill away from bankruptcy, when you're afraid to speak up because you'll lose your family's health insurance. People deserve a representative who feels that urgency, who refuses to normalize the unacceptable just because it's been unacceptable for a long time. Even if we go down, I want to go down fighting.

I always tell our team and amazing volunteers that the future is being written right now. Nothing is set in stone. Organized people beats organized money, and I intend to prove it.

Where can we find out more about you?
You can learn more at kirosforco.com, where you can read about the platform, donate, and find out how to get involved. I'm on Instagram, TikTok, and X as @KirosForCO.

Facebook: Melat Kiros for Congress
Instagram: MelatKirosCO
X: MelatKirosCO
Tiktok: @MelatKirosCO
Bluesky: melatkirsco

Our Favorite Progressive Candidates in 2026 - Melat Kiros, Colorado's 1st Congressional District