What Colorado Democrats can learn from the Tea Party’s GOP takeover

Voters were furious about the direction of the country and increasingly convinced that their party’s leaders weren’t fighting hard enough.

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First-time candidates began challenging long-serving incumbents in primary after primary — and winning. Party leaders in Washington warned that the insurgents were too extreme.

The year was not 2026, but 2009. And the battle wasn’t between Democrats and progressive challengers. It was between Republicans and the emerging Tea Party movement.

Almost two decades later, echoes of that revolt can be heard inside the Democratic Party. On Tuesday, democratic socialist Melat Kiros will try to build on a string of recent progressive primary victories by unseating 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado.

But the Tea Party’s rise offers lessons — and warnings — for both the Democratic establishment and the party’s ascendant left. Republican leaders ultimately failed to contain the movement, but the Tea Party also fell short of many of its own ambitions. It transformed the Republican Party far more than it transformed public policy. It reshaped the GOP and remade its leadership, but never repealed the Affordable Care Act, passed a balanced budget amendment or significantly reduced the national debt.

Progressive victories are no longer isolated upsets. In just the past few months, left-wing challengers have begun defeating establishment-backed candidates in city after city.

In Washington, Janeese Lewis George trounced the establishment favorite, putting herself on a glide path to be the city’s next mayor. In Los Angeles, fellow Democratic Socialists of America member Nithya Raman muscled her way into a November mayoral runoff against incumbent Karen Bass. Three House candidates endorsed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani — Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez — defeated long-serving incumbents.

While the Tea Party was largely organized around the pushback against Obamacare and the Obama administration’s efforts to combat the Great Recession, the current crop of progressive challengers disagrees with Democratic leaders on a wider range of issues, from housing to healthcare to the Gaza conflict. What unites them is less a policy agenda than a shared belief that Democratic leaders have been too cautious in confronting Trump.

Democratic voters increasingly appear to agree. One recent poll found roughly a third describe their own party as “weak” or “ineffective,” a sentiment that rewards candidates promising to fight harder.