RALEIGH – Mayoral elections are coming up in early October. What strikes me, after surveying the field of candidates and issues in many of North Carolina’s urban centers, is that the energy seems lacking and the stakes seem low compared with other cycles we’ve experienced in the recent past.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, city politics formed the leading edge of many of the political and public-policy trends in the state. In Charlotte, for example, Republican Mayor Sue Myrick won re-election in 1989 and solidified the party’s ascension to power in the city after her stunning upset of Democrat Harvey Gantt two years before. In 1993, Republican activist Tom Fetzer, running on a tax-cutting, anti-crime platform, surprised many political observers by beating Democratic councilman Barlow Herget in the (officially nonpartisan) Raleigh mayor’s race.

With Republicans winning the mayor’s post once, twice, or thrice in several other cities during the 1990s – including Winston-Salem, Durham, and Wilmington – the surprising local success of the GOP presaged and corresponded with the party’s improving fortunes in legislative and congressional contests. While the governor’s office eluded the Republicans’ grasp, their candidates also made steady gains in statewide races for judge, and eventually for Council of State posts.

By the end of the decade, however, the local political tide began to ebb. Fetzer ally Paul Coble won a tough Raleigh mayor’s race in 1999 but was defeated two years later by liberal activist Charles Meeker. Democrat Allen Joines beat Republican incumbent Jack Cavanagh in Winston-Salem the same year, and soon afterwards Democrats regained the top job in Durham and Wilmington. Only in Charlotte did the status quo prevail with the consistent re-election of Republican Pat McCrory, a moderate with solid support among old-line business Democrats in the Queen City.

In 2005, what’s striking is how low-decibel the mayoral elections, at least, are proving to be. McCrory and Meeker are running again, drawing what most analysts see as only token opposition. Joines in Winston-Salem and incumbent Keith Holliday in Greensboro did them one-better by drawing no opposition at all.

Only in the next tier of cities are the mayoral elections promising some sparks. In Wilmington, a rematch between incumbent Spence Broadhurst and the previous mayor he defeated, Harper Peterson, will turn on controversial issues such as growth controls, annexation, and a planned taxpayer-subsidized convention center that Broadhurst supports and Peterson (now) opposes. Annexation seems to be the big issue in Fayetteville, where incumbent Marshall Pitts faces a spirited challenge from former newspaper executive Tony Chavonne, who is critical of the city’s aggressive annexing.

The political divide is more stark in the Asheville mayor’s race, where unabashedly conservative councilman Joe Dunn is taking on incumbent mayor Charles Worley – who is, like Joines, Holliday, and Broadhurst, an old-school establishment Democrat – on issues such as taxes and the water utility. Two other candidates in the race may pull votes more from Worley than Dunn.

Perhaps the most entertaining race of the year will be in Durham, where incumbent Mayor Bill Bell must contend with controversial school-board member Jackie Wagstaff, who is running with two other city council candidates on a ticket of radical change, including an intervention by city government into the merged county school board. Both Bell and Wagstaff are black politicians with distinct and loyal political followings. Should be wild.

There’s no obvious unifying theme in these elections – and they’ll be joined by a host of other local contests, including high-profile school-board races in Mecklenburg, Wake, and other communities. I’ll be watching, but not necessarily for predictive trends.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.