RALEIGH – It’s not all about Iraq and legislative corruption.

It may seem that way, the 2006 election season I mean, and for many races these are the fundamental concerns for voters. I think political analysts who cite disaffection with the conduct of the campaign in Iraq as the main explanation for public disapproval of the Bush administration and Republican congressional campaigns are correct. By traditional measures of economic and social momentum, America is on the right track. Yet most Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Either voters are reacting to a set new of measures and issues or, more likely, their frustrations with the president’s policy in Iraq are coloring everything else.

But there are many candidates on the ballot for whom neither Mesopotamian killings nor the peccadilloes of Mark Foley and Jim Black are relevant issues. In dozens of competitive races for county commission this fall, Democratic and Republican candidates have been debating issues of bread-and-butter, not guns-or-butter.

I’ve argued for years that a telling way to track the emergence of a truly competitive, two-party political system in North Carolina is to delve down past the statewide contests, even past the NC House and Senate races (more next week), to changes in partisan composition of county governments. The state’s association of county commissioners now has a useful page on its website that captures this trend at a glance.

As recently as 1992, county commissions were overwhelmingly Democratic – the party occupied 390 of the 551 commission seats and controlled nearly three-quarters of the 100 counties. Then came the Republican revolution of 1994. While lots of other races were tipping their way that Election Night, the GOP also won control of 15 county commissions, yielding a 58-42 Democratic edge. The party’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed since then. After 2004, the split was 57-43 Democratic in commissions controlled and 56-44 Democratic in the total number of seats.

This year, there are highly competitive contests for commission control in North Carolina’s two most-populous counties, Mecklenburg and Wake, plus a number of other competitive races across the state. Mecklenburg currently has a Democratic majority, Wake a Republican one, and there’s another intriguing difference between the two.

In Mecklenburg, six commissioners are elected within districts and three commissioners are elected countywide. The district races aren’t likely to be competitive, except in primaries, leaving the three at-large commissioners as the swing seats. Democrats won all three slots in 2004, with Parks Helms, Wilhelmenia Rembert, and Jennifer Roberts. Their Republican challengers this year are Jim Puckett, Kaye McGarry, and Dan Ramirez. The top three vote-getters win slots.

By contrast, in Wake County all seven commissioners run from districts but stand for election countywide. Each district has partisan primaries, yielding two major candidates for each post. That introduces volatility into the Wake system, though it is somewhat offset by the fact that commissioners serve staggered four-year terms (Mecklenburg’s are all two-year terms). There isn’t the oddity of individual Democrats or Republicans competing with each other as well as with the other team for at-large slots. The 2006 Wake contests include Republican incumbent Joe Bryant vs. Democrat Donald Mial, Republican incumbent Phil Jeffreys vs. Democrat Lindy Brown, Republican incumbent and chairman Tony Gurley vs. Democrat Martha Block, and an open-seat race between Republican Paul Coble (the former Raleigh mayor) and Democrat Rodger Koopman.

Mecklenburg, Wake, and other counties with competitive commission races do share some common electoral themes, however: concern about the impact of growth on school construction and traffic, recent or prospective tax increases, whether to proceed with costly transit projects, and the propriety of using public dollars to subsidize sports and entertainment facilities.

With 2006 shaping up to be a Democratic year, one might assume that Republicans will fall short in their efforts to move closer to parity in North Carolina’s county commissions. But local races, about purely local issues and personalities, can be difficult to peg. For example, several times since 1994, Republicans have lost ground in federal or legislative races but gained in local races, and vice versa. For political surprises, don’t count out counties.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.