After venue drama, Melat Kiros makes her case for a ‘new generation of leaders’ in Congress | Rocky Mountain PBS

Piker didn’t show up to the event. The rally was originally scheduled to take place at ReelWorks, an event space in Five Points. But last week, Kiros announced the rally had moved to the Ogden Theater on Colfax. Then, on Sunday, after Piker had already arrived in Denver, Kiros posted an Instagram video confirming the rally would instead take place at the Capitol.

In the video, Kiros accused DeGette of using her “donor class” to “silence” the event. On Hasan Piker’s Twitch stream Sunday, Denver-based political strategist and Kiros campaign adviser Deep Singh Badhesha told Piker that the venue cancellations were the result of venue owners receiving pushback from “corporations,” including threats of lawsuits. 

“There was something happening with venue owners, that they were talking to each other” Singh Badhesha said.

Rocky Mountain PBS reached out to DeGette’s campaign for comment, but did not hear back before deadline. In a text to Denverite, DeGette campaign spokesperson James Owens said the claim that the congresswoman pressured venues to block Piker and Kiros’ rally was “ridiculous.”

“If Melat Kiros wants to campaign with someone who said America deserved 9/11 we’d do nothing to stop her,” Owens said in the text, according to Denverite. 

Piker did say that “America deserved 9/11” during a 2019 livestream, though he later apologized for the remark. Piker’s critics — not limited to one side of the congressional aisle, but almost always to Piker’s ideological right — often invoke his purposefully inflammatory comments when campaigning against candidates Piker has endorsed. 

Earlier this year, Piker said on the Pod Save America podcast that he would vote for Hamas over Israel because he is a “lesser evil voter.” It’s a comment he has doubled down on.

“This is not a statement they would ever hear in polite society, and that’s kind of the purpose of it,” Piker said in an interview this month with Vox’. “It is intentionally provocative, but I don’t think it’s inappropriate.”

Ballots for the June 30 primary are already in the mail across Colorado. Kiros’ rally at the Capitol is part of a final sprint in her race to unseat DeGette. Speakers at the rally reminded the audience multiple times that the election was just over two weeks away.

“We have 16 days to show this entire city that we are not waiting for permission, we’re not asking for our turn, we are taking back power and we are delivering on a better world for everybody,” Kiros said.

Piker has pushed back on the notion that he is a “kingmaker” for left-wing candidates, but the streamer’s association — if not physical presence — with the Denver rally nevertheless brings more attention to the Kiros campaign at a time when Democratic voters, from New York City, to Maine, to California, are weighing whether to ride with establishment-backed incumbents or to give progressive challengers a chance at flipping control of Congress.