Let’s cut straight to the chase:

Five abiders
State Sen. Tom Bakk, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner,  House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and state Rep. Paul Thissen have made firm drop-dead commitments to abide by the DFL endorsement process.

Bakk, Gaertner and Thissen are official candidates, and all plan to seek the party endorsement. Speaker Kelliher and Mayor Coleman are not declared candidates but are taking clear steps to run and they, too, will seek and abide by the endorsement. Their commitments to abide are more consequential than the other three, because they are top-tier candidates who might have been able to mount primary campaigns.

In case you don’t  speak the traditional lingo of Minnesota politics, a pledge to abide means that a candidate promises NOT to run in a primary against the endorsed candidate. Assuming that there is an endorsement for governor at the state DFL convention next summer. (On the slight possibility -- historically unprecedented but still slightly possible -- that the convention doesn’t endorse a candidate for governor, all bets are off and everyone is free to run in the primary.)

In the case of all five abiders, I have this either from the candidate directly or a spokester or campaign manager or, in Bakk’s case, from repeated statements to that effect that have been publicly reported.

Four non-abiders
Four more gubernatorial candidates: former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, former House DFL Leader Matt Entenza, former state Sen. Steve Kelley and state Sen. John Marty have decided not to make a pledge to abide by the endorsement process. Again, I have this directly from the candidates or top staff.

Entenza, Kelley and Marty will seek the party’s endorsement but will not pledge to abide. In the past, unwillingness to pledge to abide made it almost impossible to gain the endorsement, but Mike Hatch in 2006 won endorsement without pledging to abide. Some of the non-abiders raised that as a precedent.

I was unable Monday to reach Dayton, who is recovering from surgery, but on the endorsement question, he is in a category by himself, in that he isn’t seriously seeking the DFL endorsement (although he would be glad to have it). However, he is an announced candidate with a staff and is planning to run in the primary. Dayton followed a similar primary-only path when he was nominated and elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000. His money, name recognition and long DFL history make him a serious candidate.

One question mark
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and I traded several phone messages but never connected Monday. He is out of town on vacation.

Rybak, who is up for re-election this fall but seems well-positioned to win a third term, has not said he will run for governor but is known to be interested (same for Mayor Coleman on all three scores).

Just as this post was going up, I got a short non-answer from Rybak via text message. It reads: "I am focused on a very tough budget and running for mayor. I will talk about the governor's race if I enter it."

Rybak is definitely taking steps to prepare for a guv run (he has said for years that governor is the only job, other than mayor of Minneapolis, that he's ever wanted). But he can get away with dodging the abiding question for now, with the pretty-good excuse that he is in a race for re-election. Rybak is generally rated among the top five candidates for endorsement if/when he enters. It's less clear how he would stack up as a primary candidate without the endorsement, presumably against Dayton, Entenza and the endorsee.

Entenza a special case
Technically, Entenza has been telling people that he will abide by the endorsement if all serious candidates abide. Since Dayton is a serious and non-abiding candidate, this make Entenza a non-abider. But in private meetings with DFL insiders, including other potential candidates for governor, Entenza has made it clear that he expects to run in the primary, with or without the endorsement, and that he is prepared to do whatever it takes, including spending millions of dollars of his family's money, to win the nomination.

Entenza is the only serious contender who is in position to make a serious run for the endorsement and then, if he doesn’t get it, to easily mount a primary campaign. He has been running full time and hard for several months and is considered among the front-runners.

Entenza has won DFL statewide endorsement before -- for attorney general in 2006 -- but he withdrew early from that race under a cloud, which is part of the baggage he will have to carry into the race for guv.

Kelley and Marty
The non-abiding strategies of Steve Kelley and John Marty were a little more surprising. At this early stage, neither is considered among the front-runners for endorsement, but it’s hard to see how either of them would be a major factor in a primary, where personal wealth, fundraising prowess or at least a household name is a prerequisite.

True, Marty was the DFL gubernatorial endorsee in 1994 and won a close primary to become the DFL nominee, although he got clobbered in the general election. Marty unsuccessfully sought the endorsement again in 1998. He was a firm abider in both of those campaigns.

Although he is not considered among the front-runners for endorsement this year, it would appear that winning the endorsement would be his only chance and, historically, refusing to make a clear commitment to abide has been a major blow to the chance of getting the DFL endorsement.  

But Marty’s campaign manager, Daniel Fanning, said Marty “is going after the endorsement and wants to abide by it, and plans to abide by it,” but with “at least two other candidates” (that would be Dayton and Entenza) not pledging to abide, Marty isn’t willing to make a firm pledge to abide. (Late afternoon update: In the thread below this post, it's comment #8, Fanning expands at greater length about Marty's attitude toward the endorsement and abiding.)

To DFL delegates who care about such matters, this will be taken as a failure to abide and therefore reduces his chance of winning endorsement. It leaves Marty with the option, if he isn’t endorsed, to run in a primary where he would have little chance. But I suppose it’s also true that one can spin scenarios in which there is a crowded primary field and someone could win with a relatively small percentage.

The same analysis would seem to apply to former Sen. Kelley. He has run for statewide office three times (for U.S. Senate in 2000, dropping out after losing the endorsement; for governor in 2006, abiding by the endorsement of Hatch, even though Hatch hadn’t pledged to abide; and then, after Entenza’s sudden post-convention withdrawal from the '06 race for attorney general, Kelley received an emergency post-convention endorsement  from the DFL Central Committee, only to lose in a three-way primary to Lori Swanson.

The circumstances of that defeat surely have a lot to do with Kelley’s decision not to come in as an abider this year.  There is convincing evidence that Kelley was the victim of a dirty trick when Hatch recruited two challengers into the primary to divide the vote, which worked to the benefit of Hatch’s protégé, Swanson.

When I spoke to him about his plans Sunday evening, Kelley made a general reference to these previous experiences, and to the fact that Hatch had been endorsed for governor without pledging to abide, when he explained his current plan. Still, as with Marty, it’s hard to see how Kelley, with a small budget and relatively little name recognition, wins a primary that features at least Dayton, Entenza and a DFL endorsee.

The gender factor
It may also be noteworthy that  the two women currently seeking  (in the case of Gaertner, who has been a declared candidate for many months) or planning to seek (in the case of Kelliher) the nomination have made firm pledges to abide.

It is widely assumed, and for good reason, that whatever happens at the convention, Dayton and Entenza will be running in the primary. If the endorsee is neither of them but is a male, that would put a three-man field in the primary. Minnesota has never had a woman as governor, nor even as a major-party nominee for governor. There are certainly activists and donors, in Minnesota and nationally, who would be anxious to see that streak broken. A primary pitting one female candidate against three males would bring some favorable math into the picture for the woman.

Gaertner is generally not rated as a top-five candidate for endorsement, but Kelliher is. If she wins the endorsement, she will presumably face at least two wealthy male candidates who plan to run in the primary and perhaps others. In that scenario, the gender math would work in her favor, as well as the advantages of being the endorsee.  By pledging to abide, she presumably increases her chance of being the endorsee. But by pledging to abide, she also forgoes the opportunity to potentially enter a primary without the endorsement but in a lineup that could be favorable to lone female against two or three or even more men.

Lastly, it should be noted that the value of the DFL endorsee isn't what it used to be. For decades, anyone who defied the endorsement process and risked party unity by mounting a primary challenge would be shunned. But that is no longer true. The last two gubernatorial endorsees did win nomination without serious primary challenges, but before that, primary battles were more common than uncommon and several challengers won the nomination. This year will be another test of the value of the endorsement.

I'll start working on a comparable piece about the Republican field for guv.