Michelle Kelm-Helgen, who most recently served as outgoing Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller's chief of staff and was a senior advisor to the transition effort, will be deputy chief of staff.

DFL gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton needs help picking commissioners, and he has created a website to get it.

Mark Dayton, who has an unofficial lead over Republican Tom Emmer in the governor's election, has announced two well-known DFL operatives to lead his transition team including Tina Smith, above.

A slate of prominent Minnesota Democrats gathered at a private home Tuesday evening to appeal to DFLers who are thinking about voting for Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner in November instead of DFL nominee Mark Dayton. The event, hosted by top-drawer DFLers like House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and former House Minority Leader Matt Entenza - all of them one-time 2010 candidates for governor themselves - was billed as question-and-answer session in a mass email sent out to Democrats.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak has created a new political fund, called RYPAC. The purpose of the fund is to support statewide Democrats, including candidates for the Minnesota Legilslature.

R.T. Rybak earned his first labor union endorsement in the 2010 gubernatorial contest before even entering the race.

The party’s main task at its 2010 state convention will be anointing its official candidate for governor. Eight candidates who might conceivably be considered viable remain in the hunt; two besides Dayton have said that they will run in the primary, no matter what happens in an endorsement battle next Saturday that’s bound to be long and punishing.

This week we checked in on the R.T. Rybak for Governor headquarters. It's located just a few blocks from the U of M campus. Turns out the location is paying off in spades.

There are two clear front-runners in the battle for the DFL gubernatorial endorsement: House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. By the only measures currently available – caucus straw poll, pledged delegates – they’re well ahead of the rest of pack of contenders. That will almost certainly remain the case when delegates assemble for the statewide party convention in Duluth at the end of April.

The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board will not investigate a complaint filed by the Minnesota Republican Party against DFL gubernatorial candidate and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.