An Orthodox Jew, without prior political experience, has thrown his kippah into the race for Denver’s 1st Congressional District, running as an independent against Melat Kiros, an anti-Israel democratic socialist.
Dr. Shimon Blau told JNS on Monday that he wouldn’t go into details about what inspired him to run or about his positions on Israel. His campaign launched officially on Sunday, and he and his team are “refining my talking points,” he told JNS.
Blau, 50, who is known as Shimi, is a lifelong Denver resident and a medical doctor, who specializes in interventional spine treatments and pain management.
He left Denver as a young man to study at yeshivas, including Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore, and returned to his home city for a fellowship after graduating from medical school at the University of Maryland and practicing in Florida for a year.
An observant Jew, Blau was raised in a religious family on Denver’s west side and belongs to an Orthodox synagogue which, for security reasons, he declined to name.
He told JNS in a brief conversation that he and his wife of 18 months, Ricki, have no children “yet.”
JNS asked about his views on arms embargos of the Jewish state. “I’m running as a pro-Denver candidate on what I can do to make life better for people in Denver on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
He told JNS that there are about 90,000 Jews in the metro Denver area.
Blau’s campaign website states that he is liberal on social issues and conservative on fiscal policies and isn’t accepting money from PACs or special interest groups.
Rabbi Yossi Serebryanski, of Chabad of South Denver, told JNS that if Blau didn’t decline PAC money, “the first thing Kiros’s campaign would have done would have been to label him ‘the AIPAC candidate.’”
Blau told JNS that it is “tragic” that some have turned “AIPAC” into a slur in primary campaigns. He declined to elaborate beyond adding, of Kiros, that “we are facing a rabid antisemite.”
Kiros, a 29-year-old lawyer who unseated 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) by almost 13.5 points in the Democratic primary election in Colorado, made accusations of Israeli “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” in Lebanon a central part of her candidacy.
She has also said that Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre was the “inevitable consequence of apartheid.” She said something similar about the Sept. 11 attacks. “We destabilized a lot of the Middle East,” she said. “That forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response.”
Kiros also refused in an interview to say if she thought the 2025 firebombing of marchers in Boulder, Colo., who were calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas, was antisemitic. The attacker killed an 82-year-old woman and injured others.
Blau writes on his campaign site that “my father was a Holocaust survivor from Poland who served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War before earning an engineering degree from Columbia University. He helped build bridges, contributed to the Apollo space shuttle program and later transitioned into the real estate business.”
“He loved Denver deeply, especially the mountains that surround our city. He skied well into his 80s, and the outdoors remained one of his greatest joys throughout his life,” Blau writes. “My mother was from France and worked alongside him while creating a home defined by generosity, hospitality and the belief that there was always room for one more at the table.”
That “love for Denver was expressed in countless ways, from supporting the arts and cultural institutions that make this city special to donating benches throughout the community, quiet reminders of their belief that public spaces belong to everyone and should bring people together,” he stated. “They also taught me to value civic engagement, philanthropy and service to others.”
If elected, Blau writes that he would caucus with the Democrats.
“I am neither a socialist nor MAGA,” he writes. “I reject the ideological extremes on both the left and the right, because I believe most people are looking for practical solutions, respectful dialogue and leaders willing to put the country ahead of partisan politics.”
“Caucusing with a party does not mean surrendering my independence,” he added. “I will support ideas that are good for Colorado and oppose policies that are not, regardless of which party proposes them.”
Colorado’s attorney general certified late last week that Blau collected enough signatures to get on the ballot.
