State Sen. Tom Bakk was trying to hurry through the Capitol halls between meetings Thursday but kept running into well-wishers who lamented his withdrawal from the governor’s race.

I caught up with him, too, and chatted briefly. He noted that early on he’d expected at this point in the race — a month before the DFL nominating convention — that there’d be two leading metro candidates vying for the DFL nod, and that he’d be the Greater Minnesota alternative.

But the candidates haven’t thinned out the way he’d expected, and with eight still in the running — and tons of  uncommitted delegates out there — he felt he couldn’t take the time from his schedule as Senate Tax Committee chair to keep working the phones for those uncommitteds.

“And uncommitted delegates don’t answer their phones anymore, because so many candidates keep calling them,” Bakk said.

Then he rushed off to his next meeting.