SHELBY, N.C. — For all of the congressional hearings and cable coverage they have spawned, the government investigations into Russian interference in last year’s election do not readily come up in conversations at the Shelby Cafe.

Joyce Holcomb, who lives here in town, considered the topic in the crowded diner on Thursday morning. They have not found anything, she said between sips of coffee. And the fact that her senator, Richard M. Burr, a Republican, is the chairman of the Senate investigation does not change her opinion that it is all “a waste of time.”

“If there’s really something,” she said, “they need to find it and finish it up.”

It’s hard to find people in this southern area of North Carolina who are worked up by Russia’s meddling in the election or by the possibility that President Trump’s associates may have somehow been involved. When pressed, they will say it could be the biggest political crisis in decades or a smear campaign against the president, but with other, more pressing local issues on their minds, many North Carolinians are reserving their judgment — and their attention.

People around here are as short on details about Mr. Burr as they are on the investigation he leads — despite his 22 years in Congress, 12 of them in the Senate. It does not appear that his leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation will change that. And the highly publicized investigation won’t be helping, or hurting, Mr. Burr in the next election. Last year, Mr. Burr announced that he planned to leave politics at the end of his term, in 2022.