Meet the Gen Z Candidates Challenging Colorado's Longest-Serving Congressmember

Diana DeGette was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996 — before either of her primary challengers were born.

DeGette, now 68, is the longest-serving member of Colorado's current congressional delegation. She will have represented the state's First Congressional District in Denver for thirty years across fifteen terms by the time her term ends in January 2027. That's the lengthiest run in the U.S. House for any Coloradan since Edward T. Taylor, who died in office in 1941 after serving 32 years.

DeGette is seeking her sixteenth term in 2026. But two political newcomers are hoping to end her record-breaking reign: 28-year-old Melat Kiros and 27-year-old Carter Hanson are running against DeGette in the Democratic Party primary.

"This isn't about age. It's about ability and it's about priorities," Kiros says. "When it comes to folks who have been in Congress for decades...they have become so disconnected from what it is like to be an ordinary person who doesn't have that kind of power, and what it means to operate in this economy today."

The young Democrats lack DeGette's political experience — neither Kiros nor Hanson have ever run for elected office before — but they argue that their lived experience is more valuable. The challengers describe DeGette as out of touch with normal Denver citizens as a result of spending the equivalent of their entire lifetimes working in Washington, D.C.

In addition to facing modern cost-of-living and workforce challenges, both Kiros and Hanson have been personally impacted by national political issues. Kiros was fired from her job as an attorney after writing in support of local pro-Palestine student protesters. Hanson's research into wastewater surveillance was defunded as part of President Donald Trump's government efficiency initiative.

"People want someone who they can understand on an intrinsic level, who has experienced those same issues personally and not just heard about them," Hanson says. "These issues affect the outcomes of our lives in a big way. Frankly, we cannot wait and hope the older generations will watch out for us. We have to watch out for ourselves."

The candidacies are part of a national wave of Democrats from Generation Z pushing to unseat party elders after Republicans seized control of the presidency and Congress in 2024. Some young Democrats believe replacing longtime incumbents with new candidates will re-energize voters. They're encouraged by the recent success of politicians like Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor over former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, age 67.

This comes as the idea of establishing congressional term limits grows increasingly popular. A whopping 87 percent of adults favor limiting the number of terms Congressmembers can serve, with the support steady among Democrats and Republicans alike, according to a Pew Research Center report from September 2023.

DeGette has faced primary challengers several times over the decades, repeatedly emerging victorious by wide margins. However, pressure against her is ramping up this time around. Four Democrats have filed to run against DeGette in 2026 (the two others, Olivia Miller and Tiffany Rodgers, have since dropped out). And a July column written by a self-proclaimed "longtime friend" of DeGette urged the congresswoman to retire and "hand off the baton."

DeGette argues that it is unfair to ask someone to step down "simply because you've been there for a while," she said during a press roundtable on August 7.

"What I think you need to have in Congress is a combination of experience and fresh blood. ...I know the parliamentary procedure on how to put up the fight," DeGette says, adding that she has colleagues on both sides of the aisle who "probably should have retired a long time ago," and others who "are really working hard and fighting hard."

While DeGette is the most senior member of Colorado's congressional delegation, she is not even close to having the longest congressional tenure nationwide. Ten sitting members have been in Congress for more than forty years, including 91-year-old U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who has retained office for fifty years.

Still, DeGette says she is open to the challenge.

"I believe that I should be required to go out to the voters and make the case for why they should hire me every two years," DeGette says. "If somebody wants to run against me, they should make their case."

Melat Kiros

Kiros, 28, is an attorney, Ph.D. student and barista running on a platform of reducing the influence of money in politics. She views billionaires and corporate lobbyists as the primary forces preventing federal initiatives that she supports, including making housing affordable, providing universal health care and increasing the minimum wage.

To remove big money from politics, she says four changes are necessary: Ban members of Congress from lobbying after leaving office, ban members of Congress and their immediate family from trading stocks while in office, establish eighteen-year term limits for members of Congress, and tax campaign contributions from super PACs to create a public-financing fund for congressional candidates.

"This is really about making a fundamental change in our economy and in our government to ensure that we take back that power that belongs with the people, because right now it's been taken by money," Kiros says. "My priorities are on long-term sustainable policies that make an impact that can be felt and seen by everyday people in their daily lives."
Kiros believes the Democratic Party underperformed in the 2024 election because members positioned themselves only as fighting against Trump and the Republican Party, rather than fighting for working people and a future that voters want to see.

"Saying 'we're better than the other guys' is just not enough. It's not enough when people are unable to afford their housing, their health insurance, their student loan debt," Kiros says. "We need more people in the party who are going to be addressing the heart of those issues, which is the influence of money in politics. ...We don't have time for measured and reasonable solutions. We have to go big and we have to fight for a country and a future that we deserve."

Kiros was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and came to Denver with her family as an infant. They later moved to Aurora, where Kiros attended Sky Vista Middle School and Eaglecrest High School. She studied political science and economics at Washington College, and earned a law degree from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.

After graduation, Kiros worked as an attorney at a New York law firm, doing securities regulation work. Kiros says she originally intended to go into public service, but a series of political disappointments left her feeling "confused and jaded." She notes the election of Trump in 2016 and Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court as moments that showed her the political system is "not working in favor of ordinary people" and the two parties are not "playing by the same rules."

"Honestly, I just gave up," Kiros says. "I didn't think there was anything that I could do individually, or that Democrats were going to do, to change things in favor of working people again. So I decided to go into big law. I wanted to make whatever money I could to pay off my loans, take care of my family and just call it a day."

Then came the Hamas attacks against Israel in October 2023, and the start of Israel's war on Gaza. After pro-Palestinian protests exploded across American college campuses, Kiros says she published an article in support of the protesting students, some of whom were being suspended, expelled or having job offers rescinded. Kiros says her employer told her to take the article down and when she refused, she was fired.

Though she lost her job, the experience and the student protests made her realize the power of "fighting against the powers that be and fighting for the dignity of people," she says.

"I come from the northern region of Ethiopia, Tigray, where there was a genocide a few years ago that claimed the lives of at least 600,000 civilians. I protested when that was happening," Kiros explains. "I wasn't going to compromise on my values. I wasn't then, I won't now."

Kiros then moved back to Denver and began a public affairs Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado, to research policy solutions to reform the national political system. She decided to run for Congress after Trump was re-elected in 2024, saying Democrats aren't doing enough to resist harmful actions from the Trump administration or to offer a plan after Trump leaves office.

"There are people in the party and in the city who are interested in seeing a new generation of leadership rise up," Kiros says. "We have to build a new system, new policies, bolder legislation that protect the dignity of people as our society shifts dramatically over the next few decades. I want to be a part of that conversation."

Carter Hanson

Hanson, 27, is an environmental scientist, substitute teacher and master's student studying environmental policy at the University of Denver. His campaign is centered on environmentalism; he wants to reform longstanding laws that were created to protect the environment but instead get in the way of projects that would help in the long term.

He advocates for fast-tracking energy transmission projects, mass transit infrastructure and more housing construction in areas that would reduce daily vehicle commutes.

"We live in an atmosphere further from a normal carbon level than the last ice age. And it's getting worse, not better," Hanson says. "You and me, we do not have a future in that scenario. ...The American people need someone who they can trust with environmentalism as their main thing to go in and change those laws."
Hanson says he was inspired to run for office when some of the federal funding sources for his university's microbiology lab were cut by the Trump administration earlier this year. Hanson has worked part-time in the lab since 2023 and was researching wastewater surveillance as a means of tracking bird flu before the funding was pulled.

"My lab officially lost funding on June 15, and I declared [my candidacy] on June 19," he says. "That was the last straw for me. It's clear that there are very powerful people in the world who want to make my field go away, and I can't take that lying down. ...Politics wasn't something that I ever seriously considered doing until the doors that I was trying to go through started closing because of politics."

Hanson was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in Michigan and Texas before moving to Colorado for college in 2016. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in environmental studies from the University of Colorado Boulder, he says he went on to work for an air emissions testing company for a year.

He was fired from the position in 2023 for allegedly revealing confidential company information online, though Hanson describes the situation as "whistleblower retaliation," claiming that he was terminated for discussing misconduct regarding how his employer handled emissions reporting for certain polluters.

Hanson argues that DeGette does not understand the economic situation of young people like himself, pointing to the reduction of entry-level jobs, the emergence of artificial intelligence in the workforce and increasing housing prices. Long-standing members of the Democratic Party, like his opponent, are not addressing such issues with enough urgency, he claims.

"The Democratic Party has not been meeting the moment," Hanson says. "Are we going to expect the people who have been in that party for my whole lifetime to suddenly retrain themselves and suddenly learn new expectations and new techniques? Or should we let people who don't have those past expectations holding them back give it a shot?"

One of those so-called restrictive past expectations is bipartisanship. Hanson's campaign videos and website are filled with digs at Republicans, including describing the people running the country as "evil," "visionless sellouts" and "mediocre fascist men bent on destroying the country because they’re not smart or hardworking enough to contribute anything worthwhile."

Hanson defends these opinions as a "rational reaction to what's going on," saying his statements are only reinforced by his personal interactions with Republicans, particularly while living in Texas. He believes it is not productive to work with such people, arguing that Democrats have been losing national elections because they're not pushing progressive agendas enough, not because the majority of voters align with the other party.

"I have a lot of friends who are educated and very liberal, but will not vote for Democrats because they no longer believe in the party. We need new people to come up and change the image of what the Democratic Party is," Hanson says. "We live in a time that is alarming and that is extreme. We can't be shy about saying it."

Diana DeGette

DeGette says she understands the frustration of some of her young constituents, though she feels the anger is being misdirected at the Democratic Party.

"If you talk to people, what they're really frustrated and mad about is that Donald Trump and the Republicans are in control of all three levels of our government right now," DeGette says. "People want to see changes. But when I talk to people about what I care about — affordable health care for everybody, food safety for everybody, being able to get good education and good jobs — that's what people care about."

Since Republicans control Congress and the presidency, Democrats have little hope of blocking Republican-supported legislation. But DeGette argues that the Democrats' work to fight back is still essential, even if it goes unnoticed by the general public. She is part of a litigation task force that monitors court cases challenging illegal actions by the Trump administration; DeGette says she writes amicus briefs to support such lawsuits, and 107 lawsuits have resulted in federal actions being fully or partially blocked by courts. DeGette has held numerous press conferences and led hours-long committee debates discussing the impacts of federal actions like Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act kicking people off of Medicaid. She has also sent letters to various federal officials demanding reversals of mass layoffs and federal funding cuts. One such letter helped reinstate hundreds of employees terminated from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she claims.

"Our job right now is to make noise," DeGette says. "To let everybody know this is happening, and then to make them back off."

Before she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996, DeGette worked as a civil rights attorney and served in the Colorado Legislature for four years. Throughout her lengthy congressional career, DeGette has developed a reputation as a leading advocate for reproductive rights, environmental protections and health care access.

Today, DeGette is the ranking Democrat on Congress's Health Subcommittee, in addition to sitting on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee and the Energy Subcommittee. She is co-chair of the Diabetes Caucus and the Reproductive Freedom Caucus. DeGette presided over the House debate for Trump's first impeachment trial in 2019, and served as one of nine impeachment managers during the second trial in 2021.

"We need people who are tough fighters who can help do that," DeGette says, defending her decision not to retire. "If someone has been there and they're not doing anything, that's a different story than if they're one of the leaders."

DeGette says her experience is valuable to "groundbreaking younger politicians" as well, noting that she has worked closely with New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. DeGette says she helped secure Ocasio-Cortez a spot on the Health Subcommittee and assisted her in offering amendments to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

"I do think that having articulate, passionate, intelligent members across the board is important," DeGette says, referring to Ocasio-Cortez. "I think probably a lot of the students can really relate to somebody like that. ...We need both. Experience and fresh blood."

DeGette says she does intend to retire "at some point," but does not believe now is the time.

Republicans currently control the U.S. House by only seven seats, with four seats vacant (three Democrats and one Republican). If Democrats regain the majority in 2026, DeGette says she will be chair of the Health Subcommittee, which all health care-related legislation goes through. And she'll be able to use her institutional knowledge to help Democrats block Republican legislation and get through the remainder of Trump's second term, she argues.

"If we take the House in 2026, then we have one job and that job is oversight over the Trump administration," DeGette says. "This is the biggest threat to our democracy that we've had, certainly in my lifetime. And it's going to take everybody fighting together to get this done."

The Democratic Party's primary election will be held on June 30, 2026. Whoever wins is likely to face CD1's only current Republican candidate, Amanda Capobianco, in the general election on November 3, 2026.