Twelve people in Minneapolis and 11 in St. Paul filed to run for mayor by late Tuesday, the deadline for candidate filings.

It is a whittled down group in Minneapolis compared to four years ago, when 35 candidates ran, after the city raised the filing fee in 2014 from $20 to $500. St. Paul raised its filing fee from $50 to $500 in 2011.

Mayor Betsy Hodges faces well-funded challenges from Council Member Jacob Frey and former head of the Hennepin Theatre Trust Tom Hoch. State Rep. Raymond Dehn attracted the most support at the Minneapolis DFL convention in July, and Nekima Levy-Pounds has also been campaigning since late 2016.

Other candidates with public campaigns have been Aswar Rahman, a young filmmaker, Al Flowers, a community activist from north Minneapolis, and Captain Jack Sparrow, running as a member of the Basic Income Guarantee party.

New entrants to the race include Troy Benjegerdes and Gregg Iverson running as DFL candidates, Charlie Gers running as a Libertarian, David Rosenfeld running as a member of the Socialist Workers Party and David John Wilson running under the banner of "Rainbows Butterflies Unicorns."

Campaign finance reports filed late last month showed that Frey, Hoch and Hodges have raised the most money.

Vince Tuss, Star Tribune
A forum for St. Paul candidates for mayor held in June.

Filing to run for City Council also ended Tuesday and there are more than 40 candidates for the 13 seats in Minneapolis, including 29 Democrats, four Republicans, four Independents, three Green Party members, two Libertarians and one Socialist Alternative candidate. Minneapolis has not had a Republican council member since the 1990s.

In St. Paul, the mayoral election in November will be the first under the ranked-choice system without an incumbent in the race.

The candidates who have been campaigning and attending forums for months — Melvin Carter, Elizabeth Dickinson, Tom Goldstein, Pat Harris, Tim Holden and Dai Thao — all filed to continue in the race.

Chris Holbrook, who ran for governor in 2014 as a Libertarian, filed Tuesday, noting, "I looked at who had filed and I did not see one fiscal conservative option for mayor of St. Paul."

Greg Copeland, Trahern Crews, Barnabas Joshua Yshua and perennial candidate Sharon Anderson also filed to run in St. Paul.

Adam Belz • 612-673-4405

Twitter: @adambelz