National elections are about war and peace and bread and butter. State elections are most often about schools and roads and jobs. North Carolina municipal elections tend to be about more mundane issues such as garbage collection.

Which is why Tuesday's local elections probably do not tell us very much about what is going on in the state's political mind.

Just two years ago, Democrats were crowing about the ouster of Republican mayors in Raleigh, Durham and Winston-Salem. "A North Carolina trifecta" is what national Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe called it.

But the municipal elections in 2001 told us nothing about the statewide elections of 2002, when Republicans had a very strong year led by Elizabeth Dole's election to the U.S. Senate.

Former House Speaker Tip O'Neill once said that all politics is local, and that is especially true in municipal races. In Raleigh, a major issue this fall was backyard garbage pickup. In Charlotte, it was who should pay for a proposed arena for the new National Basketball Association franchise.

Despite the state's economic troubles, there were few signs of voter anger. Incumbent Democratic mayors Charles Meeker of Raleigh, Bill Bell of Durham, Keith Holliday of Greensboro and Marshall Pitts Jr. of Fayetteville easily won re-election.

So did Mayor Pat McCrory of Charlotte, a Republican.

Many of North Carolina's municipal elections are officially nonpartisan. But both political parties have been plowing money and elbow grease into the local races, hoping to develop a political farm system.

That farm system has yet to produce many major-league stars. No big-city mayor has risen to the political big time in recent memory, although Republicans once had hopes for former Raleigh Mayor Tom Fetzer.

Charlotte's mayors have been the most politically ambitious. Eddie Knox ran for governor in 1984, Harvey Gantt ran for the Senate in 1990 and 1996, and Richard Vinroot ran for governor in 1996 and 2000 and is running again next year. But so far, the mayors are 0-for-5.

Cary, the suburb on steroids, was the only major town where an incumbent was thrown out. Democratic incumbent Glen Lang was eliminated in a primary, and retired Republican banker Ernie McAlister defeated Democrat Julie Aberg Robison in Tuesday's runoff.

The Cary mayoral election was about several things:

Lang's difficult personality rubbed many people the wrong way. The Republican Party put on a major push for McAlister, including recorded phone calls from Elizabeth Dole. Cary is a Republican-leaning town. And Lang's slow-growth policies were very popular when he was elected four years ago, but since then the economy has gone into a recession.

While Cary is one of North Carolina's more prosperous towns, the community has been hit harder by the recession than many people realize. Many Research Triangle Park companies, such as Nortel, have had large layoffs.

On many streets in Cary, such as mine, these are hard times.

With people worried about their jobs, Lang's slow-growth policies seemed far less appealing now. And he was thrown out like so much political trash.