Declaring that it’s “time for a new generation of leadership,” Denver Democrat Melat Kiros, the daughter of Ethiopian immigrants and a former corporate attorney, on Wednesday launched a primary campaign aimed at unseating 15-term U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who has represented Colorado’s 1st Congressional District longer than Kiros has been alive.

“I’m a proud Democrat, but these days I don’t have a lot to be proud of,” Kiros says in a campaign video announcing her run. “We hear politicians say over and over that we need bold leadership, progress and change. We’ve heard this for years — decades — but they never deliver. We need leaders who won’t just talk about fighting for us.”

The 28-year-old first-time candidate said she believes Democratic politicians are overly beholden to wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists to enact the kind of groundbreaking reforms that once defined the party, like Social Security, fair labor laws and the Civil Rights Act.

“Politics is broken,” Kiros says. “Our voices aren’t heard. Your party isn’t fighting back like they should. Why? Money and politics.”

The heavily Democratic, Denver-based 1st CD hasn’t sent a Republican to Washington since the early 1970s. The 67-year-old DeGette, a civil rights attorney and former state lawmaker, was first elected to Congress in 1996. In the last decade, she’s fended off multiple primary challenges by wide margins and gone on to win reelection by even wider margins — last year she defeated Republican nominee Valdamar Archuleta 77% to 22%.

Kiros told Colorado Politics she was moved to run for Congress when Donald Trump won a second term in November.

“I was worried the Democrats weren’t going to be up to the task of resisting the administration and putting up as much of a fight as possible,” she said, adding that her concerns have been borne out since President Donald Trump took office.

“There comes a point where the complaining has to stop and we have to get down to work,” she said. “I believe in term limits and contested primaries, so seeing nobody was doing it, I figured, I’ve got nothing to lose, so I stepped up.”

A spokeswoman for DeGette’s campaign told Colorado Politics that the lawmaker is doing the job she’s been elected to do.

“Whether it’s fighting for reproductive justice as co-chair of the Reproductive Freedom Caucus, pushing back against the dangerous misinformation spread by Robert Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump, or standing up for Denver’s families in the face of sweeping federal cuts to health care and research, DeGette has proven time and again that she’s in this to be effective for the constituents of Denver,” said Jennie Peek-Dunstone, a DeGette campaign aide.

“She will continue to focus on doing her job and holding the Trump administration accountable,” she added.

Kiros acknowledged DeGette’s decades of work in public office but added that she believes it’s time to pass the torch.

“I think she’s done some really incredible work and meaningful work, and I’m so grateful for her service, but we are just not living in a time where the methods of the past are going to work with this administration,” Kiros said.

“That’s not to say (elected Democrats) aren’t doing honest and genuine work to try to help ordinary people in this country. But being one of the most progressive cities in America, I think we deserve a representative and a champion of that caliber. I think it’s a moment people are ready for, and I hope I can contribute to that moment.”

Kiros said she’s been encouraged by the results of last month’s New York Democratic mayoral primary, when Zohran Mamdani, a young state lawmaker and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and nine other candidates by a wide margin.

“I think what Mamdani and his team have done is captured the true frustration of people,” Kiros said. “I think it’s something that folks often forget, why Obama was so popular in his first run — addressing that frustration and acknowledging it, reaching Americans who feel like they aren’t heard from by their representatives.”

Kiros, who moved to New York after getting her law degree from the University of Notre Dame in 2022, said she lost her job working as a corporate attorney after posting an online opinion piece that defended student protesters who were criticizing Israel’s response to attacks by Hamas in 2023.

“I was asked to take it down, said no, and was promptly let go,” she said, noting that she’d been struck by the similarities between Israel’s assault on Gaza and the genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia, that her parents had fled when she was an infant.

“I thought about how much I have been advocating and protesting, and then seeing how people were advocating for Palestine and were facing so many consequences,” Kiros said. That  included the “chilling effect” she said students would face if they pursued work at big law firms.

“It was definitely a formative experience,” Kiros said. “But it brought me back to service and political organizing.”

After losing her job, Kiros moved back to the Denver area — her parents live in Aurora, where she grew up — and soon landed in Five Points. She works as a barista at a local coffee shop while pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs.