Yes, some school board races fed off culture wars this year in blue Connecticut, with unprecedented curriculum debates about race, and some anti-vax, anti-mask mandates crusading bled into municipal elections.

But by the time voters rolled out across the state for Election Day 2021, they were largely on familiar turf, choosing from candidates close to home, the ones thought most likely to keep trash collection on schedule, property taxes in check and potholes filled.

Retail politics at the most local level do seem to continue to exist without the rancor of the growing divide that separates Republicans from Democrats nationally.

Indeed, I think of this year's election cycle as a last respite from the tumultuous, rancorous politics that will almost certainly mark 2022 campaigning here in Connecticut and beyond.

In many eastern Connecticut races this year, personalities more than political affiliation often drove voting. The candidate you're voting for or against may be a parent of a good friend of one of your kids. Another lives the next street over.

Where party came into play here it wasn't so much for the divisive issues dominating national politics as much as how party politics can overwhelm local government. Democrats who have controlled the Town Council in Groton and City Council in New London for the last two years had to account for their lack of transparency and accountability to the public, as they did business by party consensus behind closed doors. That's not healthy.

The pitfalls of one-party rule, it seems, are most offensive when you face it in your own town hall, when a local government is not responding to wider community interests.

Strangely, New London Republicans and members of the Green Party, who don't have a great deal in common on many policy issues, came together for an election eve demonstration this week against the monolithic domination of decision-making by city Democrats.

Groton Republicans found support campaigning among town Democrats this year because of the heavy-handed way the dominant party has run the government.

In Stonington, I'm sorry to say, Democrats and Republicans even fielded some of the same candidates, offering no choice at all.

If this seems like a rewinding of politics to a simpler, more innocent time, think again.

Connecticut Democrats already have launched a new website calling out the right-wing politics they believe have begun to grip the Connecticut Republican party, a trend that is not going to sell well in the next election cycle, when more is at stake than trash collection and potholes.

The website calling out Connecticut Republicans, for instance, for rallying around a radical Trumpist like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called the murders at Sandy Hook a hoax, is called Connecticut's Extremist Republicans.

The website foreshadows a full-on ideological confrontation in 2022 between the state's two parties, the likes of which we've never seen before.

Not many asked pointed questions of Republicans in this year's municipal elections, about whether, for example, they believe Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and if Joe Biden is a legitimate president.

Expect that kind of routine litmus test next year, when voting will cross town lines and independents are less willing to overlook Republicans who toe an increasingly radical party line because they need to cater to their base.

It will be hard for Republicans in races for the legislature and certainly Congress to get a place on their party's ballot line if they don't conform to the party's lean into authoritarianism and voter suppression. It's been possible for those Republicans to waffle a little in the past on issues like gun rights and abortion in blue Connecticut, and still get elected in the general election.

But it's hard to imagine them selling voters here on the idea that Sandy Hook was a hoax and that Trump really won the 2020 election.

Whatever wins Republicans scored on Tuesday may end up being short-lived and bittersweet, as they head into what is surely going to be a much more challenging election cycle next year, when they have to start campaigning across town lines.

Tuesday may have marked the end of innocence of sorts for Connecticut Republicans.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com