Modern autocracies must balance boosting legitimacy with the co-optation of opposition elites. Introducing subnational elections can serve both purposes by creating electoral legitimacy and renewing cadres. Still, these elections risk policy destabilisation or leading to threatening local power bases. Our paper studies this underexamined trade-off by testing how introducing elected subnational executives affects elite composition and turnover. We leverage a quasi-experiment in Kazakhstan. In June 2021, President Tokayev began a staged roll-out of rural executive elections amid regime transition, mass demand for reform, and then January 2022's 'Bloody January' protests. Since then, over 2,300 rural akims (mayors) have been elected. We map these elections and use new biographic data to compare the careers of appointed and elected akims. With sequence analysis, we assess elite turnover, diversity, and career trajectories. Our pilot analysis finds notably high turnover of existing local elites. We identify a consistent 'path to power' among akims: While experience in government and agriculture are associated with victory, we find surprising underrepresentation of those from business, military service, and the arts. These results highlight one way autocrats might manage co-optation, and have implications for the broader literature on electoral authoritarianism.