NYC Was a Win. Colorado and Kansas City Have Receipts of Their Own.
After Mamdani and the DSA sweep gave Hasan Piker his victory lap, two new data points arrived this week to complicate the narrative. Colorado Pols is not interested in his endorsements. Kansas City has entered the group chat.
The confetti from New York was barely swept up, darlings, when the map got complicated again.
On June 25, Piker's backed primary challenger lost to a pro-Israel incumbent Democrat. Not a close call anybody is bragging about. The win column in NYC was real, but the loss column exists too, and Colorado Pols has been keeping very precise notes.
The outlet, which already ran a blunt anti-Piker piece on June 18, came back for seconds on June 27 with a piece headlined, flatly, "Colorado Isn't Hasan Piker Country." That is not a request. That is a declaration. Per that piece, the argument is simple: whatever juice Piker carries in Brooklyn city council races and DSA strongholds does not automatically travel west and survive contact with a Colorado electorate. His Denver fallout apparently left a mark the outlet is not ready to stop pressing on.
And if this feels familiar, it's because the Denver story never fully closed. The June 18 cycle turned him into a cautionary tale that Democrats were literally running attack ads around. Colorado Pols publishing a follow-up nine days later, after the primary results came in, is the political press equivalent of a screenshot with the caption "still."
Then there is Kansas City. The Kansas City Star reported on June 29 that a local KC candidate went after both parties with a pointed slam, reportedly invoking "these clowns" to describe the political establishment. Per the reporting, the candidate is blasting the whole system. Sound familiar? It should. That move, the anti-establishment, a-plague-on-both-your-houses positioning, is Piker's whole brand, and it is spreading into municipal and regional races in ways that are very difficult to track, let alone credit or blame. Whether this KC candidate has any formal connection to Piker's orbit, the reporting does not establish. But the rhetoric is in the water now, and the Kansas City Star apparently found it worth covering.
Here is what the week actually shows, when you lay the pieces flat. NYC went his way. Colorado explicitly is not going his way, and local press there appears committed to saying so repeatedly. Kansas City is producing candidates who sound Piker-adjacent, which is either evidence of influence or just evidence that "I hate everyone in Washington" is a durable electoral move that predates Hasan Piker by several decades. We'll let you work that one out.
Meanwhile, IMDb picked up the UK ban story on June 28, which, sure, the algorithm wants clicks and Piker's name delivers them. We've covered that chapter extensively. What's new is the geography of the political footprint question, which this week spread from Brooklyn to Denver to Kansas City in roughly 96 hours.
We wish him strength in this trying time of trying to be politically relevant in every zip code simultaneously, my loves. The scorecard is more complicated than his supporters want and more mixed than his critics will admit, and Colorado Pols is going to keep reminding everyone of that second part for as long as the clicks hold.
Prediction: the next Colorado candidate who loses with his endorsement gets a Colorado Pols trilogy.
