U.S. Rep Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, qualified for Colorado’s June primary by the skin of her teeth Friday at the party’s district assembly, where the 15-term incumbent received fewer than half as many delegate votes as her challenger, 28-year-old Melat Kiros, a first-time candidate.

With just under 33% of the vote to Kiros’ hair over 67%, DeGette narrowly cleared the 30% threshold required for designation to the June 30 ballot. It’s the closest call the 68-year-old former state lawmaker and civil rights attorney has faced since she was elected to represent the 1st Congressional District in 1996.

A third candidate, University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, a longtime Democratic strategist and marijuana entrepreneur, is attempting to petition her way into the primary. She submitted signatures to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office last week, which has until late April to determine whether she collected enough to make the ballot.

The district, which covers Denver and a few precincts in Arapahoe County, ranks among the most overwhelmingly Democratic U.S. House seats in the country. Its voters haven’t sent a Republican to Congress since 1970.

After winning renomination for almost two decades without a challenger, DeGette has faced multiple primaries in the last decade and won each time by wide margins. Two years ago, she defeated Republican nominee Valdamar Archuleta by 55 percentage points, one of the largest margins for a contested congressional race in state history. Republicans have yet to field a candidate in the district this year.

The results from Friday night’s assembly, held on the Zoom teleconference platform, mirror the tally almost exactly two weeks earlier, when Kiros stunned DeGette at the Democrats’ Denver County assembly.

Kiros, a former New York securities attorney whose parents immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia when she was an infant, launched her campaign last summer, criticizing Democratic politicians for failing to put up enough of a fight against President Donald Trump’s second administration.

Since then, Kiros, whose campaign has been endorsed by the national Justice Democrats organization and the Denver Democratic Socialists of America, has stepped up her attacks on DeGette, including for accepting campaign contributions from corporate PACs.

“We have never in our entire history made a breakthrough by staying comfortable,” Kiros told delegates on Friday. “Every advance this party has ever made was because someone was willing to push past what was settled, safe and familiar.”

DeGette said her experience in Washington will give Denver Democrats an edge when the party wins the majority in the House after this year’s election.

“We need seasoned people who can fight for us in Washington, who can fight against Donald Trump’s illegal war, who can fight not just to defund but also dismantle ICE. And we need someone who will be a leader in the next Congress when we take the majority,” DeGette said at the assembly.

She added that she’s in line to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, which she said will give her subpoena power “to haul in RFK Jr. and his acolytes to hold them accountable.”

Under Colorado law, the candidate who gets the most delegate votes at the party’s assembly also lands at the top of the primary ballot, though the distinction hasn’t consistently led to primary wins.

In recent elections, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron Hanks, a former state lawmaker, carried the GOP’s 2022 state assembly but lost the primary to business owner Joe O’Dea, who petitioned onto the ballot. That same year, Greg Lopez top-lined the Republicans’ contest for governor but lost in the primary to eventual GOP nominee Heidi Ganahl, a former University of Colorado regent.

Both O’Dea and Ganahl lost their races in November to U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Gov. Jared Polis, respectively, while Lopez later served six months in Congress in 2024 after winning an election to fill a vacancy.

Like DeGette this year, other members of Colorado’s House delegation have finished far behind their challengers at assemblies, including former Republican U.S. Reps. Ken Buck and Doug Lamborn, who wound up with unexpected primaries in 2022 and 2016, respectively. In both primaries, the incumbents went on to win the nominations by overwhelming margins.

Following DeGette’s squeaker at the county assembly earlier this month, a spokeswoman for her campaign said she looked forward to facing the district’s voters.

“Diana DeGette has worked hard for Denver for over 30 years and is grateful she is on track to make the ballot through the assembly process,” Jennie Peek-Dunstone said, adding, “She enjoyed connecting with Democrats about the issues that matter to them.”

Kiros sounded a triumphant note late Friday after pulling in twice as many delegate votes as the incumbent.

“The case we made tonight is the case we’ll make every day until June: Denver deserves a representative who answers to the people of this district, not to defense contractors, not to pharmaceutical companies, not to corporate PACs,” Kiros said in a statement.

Mail ballots start going out to Colorado voters in early June, and they’re due back to county clerks by 7 p.m. on June 30.