Unaffiliated congressional candidate Shimon Blau, a Denver doctor, has qualified by petition for the general election in Colorado’s 1st District, where Democrat Melat Kiros defeated 15-term U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in last month’s primary, the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said Friday.

Blau, a newcomer to politics, submitted just shy of 2,000 valid signatures on July 8 days after starting his petition drive in response to Kiros’s upset primary win over DeGette.

Election officials said 1,918 of the 2,212 signatures gathered by Blau were accepted, easily clearing the 1,500 signature requirement.

Blau, who operates a medical practice devoted to pain management, said he was moved to run by comments made by Kiros, a Democratic socialist, and her supporters during the campaign, which he characterized as “antisemitic” rhetoric.

“Some of her more radical, socialist ideas bother me,” Blau told The Denver Gazette.

Kiros has described Israel’s response in Gaza and Lebanon to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas as “genocide” and called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. In an interview with Colorado Politics news partner 9News, she declined to say whether she viewed the June 1, 2025, firebomb attack by an Egyptian national against a peaceful group of protestors on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall as an example of antisemitism.

“I want to give people a voice,” Blau told The Denver Gazette. He said he considers himself “much more of a moderate. I tend to lean to the left on social issues and right on the fiscal ones.”

Kiros said she’s ready to ask voters to decide.

“Denver voters will get a chance in November to choose who they want fighting for them in Congress,” she told Colorado Politics in a text message. “I’m fighting for working people, families, renters, tipped workers, folks drowning in medical debt who deserve a better future. I plan to make my case directly the people of this district because that is what it means to live in a democracy.”

The district, with boundaries that coincide almost exactly with Denver, is one of the most overwhelmingly Democratic congressional seats in the country. Its voters haven’t sent a Republican to Congress since 1970.

Republican Christy Peterson, Libertarian Chad Humphrey and Unity Party nominee Christopher “Critter” Milton will also appear on the 1st CD ballot.