The local / national divide is a phantom, cities are also controlled by the elite interests of that city, bourgeois democracy is in full force at the local level, and it can’t be undone by local elections. You can’t vote away their wealth, their power over the city as a whole, its institutions, its police, etc. The most liberal governors are the ones deporting people, locking up immigrants, clamping down on protests, etc.

An earnest communist getting elected would have the whole machinery of bourgeois democracy working against them, ultimately to come to the same conclusion as every non-deluded communist: that the rich won’t allow you to vote away their wealth, and that class struggle and the reorganization of property requires violence and armed struggle.