Cyndy Martin, the former volunteer chair of the Democratic Party across Minnesota’s vast 8th Congressional District, is awaiting a grim vehicular homicide trial in the coming weeks after being charged in Itasca County with killing Carter Haithcock, a young father, and driving away from the scene near the Mesabi Iron Range town of Nashwauk on July 3, 2024. Friends and family have been mourning for Carter, and the incident has highlighted deep rifts within the state’s ruling political party.

The homicide case against Martin is daunting, as a write-up by Minneapolis writer Taylor Dahlin showed in great detail. On July 3, 2024, according to the complaint charged in November 2024, Martin allegedly hit and killed Carter, who was walking home from a street dance, and left the scene while on the phone with someone who advised her to call 911, but she did not until 5:54 a.m. the next day. Martin has pleaded not guilty.

There’s a Change petition with more than 880 signatures at time of publication demanding Martin “be held accountable and put behind bars.” (Itasca County Sheriff Joe Dasovich asked for patience in a response posted in May.) The court records are in the case search online as State of Minnesota vs CYNTHIA ARLENE MARTIN, case number 31-CR-24-3008.

Martin continued to serve as a core member of the DFL after that November 2024 indictment, which led to internal tensions within several DFL meetings. On December 11, Unicorn Riot (UR) contacted Martin and statewide party chair Richard Carlbom for comment on the issues below, with no response. On December 12 Martin resigned from all her DFL positions. Since we started looking into this story in November, a lot has changed in Minnesota politics: The Republican theme of accusing Minnesota Democrats of crime and scandal has metastasized into the largest urban ICE crackdown operation in the agency’s history, Feds pursue a roving police agenda using a human services fraud spending scandal as a predicate, and Governor Tim Walz dropped his 2026 reelection campaign. The DFL is still grappling with the shock of the right-wing political assassination of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who was Walz’ key legislative leader at the State Capitol, on June 14, 2025.

The DFL Party as a whole faces an open race for governor as well as the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Tina Smith, during a situation of unprecedented state violence and political turmoil. Statewide precinct caucuses are on Tuesday, February 3.

Political figures in dangerous car accidents are a recurring problem around the Midwest. The case has drawn comparisons to South Dakota’s former Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, who killed pedestrian Joseph Boever after a political fundraiser at a bar on September 12, 2020, while distracted on his cell phone. He avoided jail time but was kicked out of office and banned from ever holding office again by the North Dakota Legislature in 2022. Former Hennepin County Sheriff Dave Hutchinson topped 126 miles per hour while drunk in a county vehicle, rolling it on Interstate 94 in Alexandria on December 8, 2021.

This story shows how tightly knit the entire DFL Party is internally, and how deeply frustrated many people have become with how it is run. Martin and other “DFL Old Guard” members had been involved in a number of controversies which could dramatically affect the course of the 2026 general election in November. We hear that this turmoil seriously cut morale among progressive DFL volunteers in the Twin Cities, and it’s continued to come up inside DFL channels, which get little outside attention, except when there is a controversy.

---

Martin, a Key Player in Old Guard Internal DFL Committees; New Party Chair Called for “Due Process”

In Minnesota, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor, or DFL Party, represents the Democrats and manages party units, starting on the precinct level. It’s a state with high political engagement — since 2004 every presidential election had at least 74% voter turnout.

However, inside the DFL, many key roles in the “standing committees” are held by a relatively small number of people wearing multiple hats.

“There are people in the DFL that seem to be hellbent on alienating progressives and pushing them out from party roles even though they are dedicated and reliable volunteers, instead preferring power in the party remain in the hands of the same 20 people serving on various committees. Is there a lack of people interested in these committees that keeps them so incestuous, or is the power being kept consolidated on purpose instead of sharing knowledge and welcoming new people?”

Taylor Dahlin to Unicorn Riot

“Much of the top leadership in the party on the Constitution, Bylaws and Rules committee and the Code of Conduct committee are a lot of the same people, and many of them are protective of Cyndy Martin/wary of making public statements about it,” Twin Cities DFL Party activist and author Dex Anderson told Unicorn Riot. (Anderson was among a progressive group that tried unsuccessfully to oust Martin from a statewide leadership role.)

Among these old guard regulars was Martin, who was on the controversial Constitution, Rules, and Bylaws Committee (CRBC) as well as the Code of Conduct (CoC) committee. CoC, which doesn’t seem to have a website, has generated dozens of investigation cases, including cryptic emails to people who are not actively involved in party activities.

This committee was referred to as a “Star Chamber,” and people are not necessarily given the full accounting of what they are accused of by the review panels, which Martin was still serving on until she resigned in December. Anderson said, “I have found that the CoC complaint process is irreparably broken. There is zero transparency, and zero confidentiality, despite it being promised in the Code of Conduct.”

Dahlin told UR, “It was frustrating seeing the lack of media coverage on Cyndy’s continued roles in the DFL, especially the Code of Conduct committee. I don’t think anyone who hits and kills someone with their vehicle and appears to be so unrepentant about it should sit in a position of high morality to judge someone else’s conduct, especially when this process has been weaponized against progressives.”

Martin’s situation came up at a contentious DFL Feminist Caucus annual meeting on September 9, where Martin is the outgoing chair. “This is why I got involved in the Feminist Caucus — at the time, she was the chair of the caucus, which I found repugnant, so I decided to run for Vice Chair because the Old Guard in the caucus planned to just shuffle around leadership and move Cyndy to Vice Chair but keep her in leadership,” Anderson told Unicorn Riot. “Instead what happened was that I got misgendered repeatedly, and mocked for using they/them pronouns — specifically by current Ilhan [Omar] challenger Latonya Reeves, who insisted in the meeting that whenever someone asks Latonya’s pronouns, Latonya replies with ‘Black Queen,’ which is patently offensive and sets trans identity as a white thing as opposed to something Black people can possess,” Anderson said.

This meeting drew accusations of both an improper motion to put in a new leadership slate as well as the mocking of a non-binary attendee, Anderson, who wrote up an account of what happened. The leadership “very clearly wanted to vote for their friends and be done with it. At the very beginning, an illegal motion was made to just adopt an entire slate of leadership, despite there being challengers to those positions known to the caucus,” wrote Anderson.

Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez called on the DFL to condemn what happened. Anderson confirmed “one user was kicked out of the meeting for bringing up that Cyndy killed a teenager and stating that it was morally bankrupt for her to be in leadership.” (In early December the CBRC ruled that the leadership individuals chairing and co-chairing that Feminist Caucus meeting had been inappropriate, and recommended a sort of probation.)

Briana Rose Lee, the Minneapolis DFL chair in 2022-2024, posted on November 17 that the CoC should be abolished, and that no one should be able to sit on more than one statewide committee, which would eliminate the multi-hat status quo that has concentrated power in the state party. Lee told Unicorn Riot:

“The code of conduct committee can’t function with overlapping power structures, and conflicting loyalties. What happened with Cindy [sic] Martin shows exactly why. This isn’t about any one person, it’s about structural failures. People give their time and energy in good faith and when situations like this happen, it causes trust in leadership to break down and people will walk away feeling demoralized. That’s why I’ve been calling for clear boundaries and ultimately for the code of conduct committee to be dissolved. If the party wants to rebuild trust, we can’t pretend the Cyndy Martin situation wasn’t mishandled. A person on criminal trial for killing a teenager in a hit and run should not be running an entire congressional district, chairing the feminist caucus and maintaining a seat on the two most important state-wide committees: Constitution and Rules, and the Code of Conduct.

It’s especially egregious to have someone on trial for vehicular homicide to judge others’ actions and issue statements for the code of conduct committee. It’s made me personally think the committee had zero credibility or merit. When systems break down like this, and trust within an organization breaks down, there needs to be a hard look at ourselves and a cultural reset. Overlapping roles in these committees create the exact conditions that allow harm to go unaddressed. Volunteers and voters deserve better than a system designed to protect insiders. And none of this is to mention the fact that a teenager is dead, and it feels like there’s been no acknowledgment or accountability for that. We expect better of Republicans, but we need to look in the mirror and expect better of ourselves first.”

Briana Rose Lee, Vice Chair for Stonewall DFL caucus & member on State Executive Committee, former chair of Minneapolis DFL (2022-2024)

Acting for the state party, on August 22, the CRBC made the controversial decision to nullify the Minneapolis DFL’s endorsement of Omar Fateh at a July 19 city convention, which broke a very long streak of no-endorsement outcomes for the city party unit. (Full document here including a long list of new guard Minneapolis officials who tried to rebuff the committee’s move). The Minneapolis DFL scathingly responded to the state party, posting “widespread distrust” against the state party has ensued:

“Widespread distrust and feelings of betrayal have emerged among many party members, not least in the urban core of Minneapolis. Turnout across Minneapolis is critical to the DFL’s success in statewide races, and CRBC’s alienation of these voters will directly harm the party’s ability to raise donations, energize volunteers, and get out the vote in 2026.”

“Minneapolis DFL appeals interference with convention outcomes,” September 4, 2025

Anderson started “A Better DFL” as a vehicle to push for reforms, since “The DFL has a transphobia problem,” as the website puts it. “It’s a web of problems, mostly down to the incestuous nature of leadership at the top that wants to protect their power in the party rather than make it an actual big tent,” Anderson said.

In a listening session on November 13, the new DFL Party Chair Richard Carlbom responded to Martin and said he would “allow due process to play out and that’s my commitment.” Carlbom was elected to the role late in March to replace Ken Martin (no relation to Cyndy), who became chair of the entire Democratic National Committee after the party’s nearly nationwide defeats in 2024.

Anderson said, “attempts to get State Chair Richard Carlbom to deal with this matter have been met with empty promises of action that have not been followed through. It seems clear that the only thing he will respond to is bad press, so that’s a big part of why many of us are going public about this now.”

On November 22, Martin made a motion to remove another CBRC committee official, Dan Thomas-Commins, but she was defeated. (Thomas-Commins is a self-described “rules nerd” who also participated as a Minnesota rules committee member involved with the pro-Palestine sit-in outside the United Center at the Democratic National Convention last summer.)

Before she resigned in December, unlike most of the other Congressional District chairs, Martin’s name was missing from the state DFL contact information webpage, but she was listed as chair on the DFL’s CD8 leadership webpage. She was also listed as the Vice-Chair for the Itasca County DFL.

---

Economic Questions Hover over Eighth Congressional District after GOP Takeover

There are more political questions about CD8 as well — the future direction of the DFL’s party unit could affect a number of major issues. A nickel and copper sulfides deposit called the Tamarack Intrusive Complex has drawn the interest of Talon Metals, while the risks of sulfide mining are poorly understood. Groups like Save the Boundary Waters are organizing against the mining project, saying it will pollute the area for generations and damage the recreation economy. South American mining giant Rio Tinto is obliged to fund 40% of the project. (Rio Tinto’s checkered history includes 2023 Securities and Exchange Commission charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for alleged bribes in Guinea.)

UR: Contentious Copper-Nickel Mine Gets Permit Approval from MN Appeals Court [Jan. 2024]

Also, there is a controversial proposed 200+ acre data center that may come to the Duluth suburb of Hermantown, the subject of a lawsuit in November by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and “Stop the Hermantown Data Center.” The group noted they are “opposed to the use of NDAs to obscure public awareness of what city officials are discussing and deciding.”

The rural farm economy is in serious trouble in Minnesota. CD8 had 8,846 farms in 2022, according to the USDA. Incomes declined in 2024 according to the University of Minnesota Extension service. “Farmers entering mediation due to financial hardship has increased sharply this year” according to Marshall Radio; U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (DFL) pointed out that “generations building these export markets” had been demolished by the Trump administration’s “haphazard tariffs” this year. Steve Zenk with the state Department of Agriculture said low crop prices and the loss of market share for soybeans in China were contributing to farmers’ struggles. The Minneapolis Federal Reserve reported that loan repayments dropped; 70% of agricultural bankers reported decreased investment in equipment and buildings while 79% said incomes had fallen in the third quarter compared with 2024. This is all likely to cause more family farms to go out of business.

Another source we talked to felt it was unlikely that the situation with Martin was due to some influence from the former DFL legislators who lost power in the region. Between 2020 and 2024, in the Minnesota House, control of almost the entire Arrowhead region went Republican, except for seats 8A and 8B in Duluth. It’s a long political fall for the Iron Range, which was once a radical enclave of the industrial left in the United States.

The Iron Range’s long-vaunted organized labor ranks were infused with Finnish socialist values, and even served as a stronghold for the Industrial Workers of the World more than a century ago. The DFL’s unique structure was formed in 1944 after the Democrats merged with the Farmer-Labor Party, which was created in 1918 by merging the Nonpartisan League and the Duluth Union Labor Party. These parties formed amid major economic upheaval in the farm sector.

The Martin case attracted attention in Minnesota Republican circles, but it was low on the radar all year. The Republican national leadership, meanwhile, decided to make allegations about crimes in Minnesota the centerpiece of their domestic crackdown agenda in recent weeks. Write-ups like the Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo, claiming without evidence that Somali immigrant remittances are going to a terrorist organization, clearly influenced the Trump White House, which recently declared it would cancel “temporary protective status” for Somalis in Minnesota and sent in thousands of federal agents soon after.

Rep. Kristin Robbins (R-37A) chairs the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy committee and is running for governor. House Speaker Rep. Lisa Demuth (R-13A) is also talking up the fraud committee and running for governor as well — a race which Tim Walz has now dropped out of.

Another alleged issue here is opiate painkillers taken by an aging population of drivers across the country. Martin admitted to taking prescribed medical opioids during the day before the crash. According to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, “In 2020–2021, 12.8 percent of adults aged 65 and older, on average, filled at least one outpatient opioid prescription.”

---

Will a New Generation Replace the Old Guard in DFL Politics?

Late last year, within dispirited progressive ranks of the DFL, the question was getting raised about how “ossified” the old guard is, and the quality of their decision-making after Ken Martin’s 14-year tenure ended. Before Martin resigned — a year after she was charged in Itasca County — many wondered how this would affect the fate of Minnesota Democrats.

Before this federal crackdown started in recent weeks, one theme we heard was a serious generational challenge in Minnesota politics. Beyond DFL internal committees, younger generations struggle to get a place at the table. Are new people getting let into the leadership of major nonprofit organizations? What about the Public Utilities Commission, the dreaded Minneapolis Charter Commission, the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board, the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources?

The case of Martin’s alleged killing of Carter Haithcock in Nashwauk on that tragic night in July 2024 stands alone in its seriousness, but it also inadvertently revealed profound tensions wired throughout Minnesota’s statewide DFL Party.

---

Follow us on X (aka Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, BlueSky and Patreon.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help sustain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media organization: