Your bucketsort is the elegant solution that I was seeking. Interesting though it's about twice as slow as my ugly version as indicated by this benchmark:
That's because you didn't fix my typos. Here's a different benchmark, with some of the other suggestions (I didn't include any that went beyond sorting on 'fld_type'): 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Benchmark qw /timethese cmpthese/;
    
our @advocates = map {{fld_title => 'Rec' . $_,
                       fld_type  => [qw /National State Local/] -> [ra
+nd 3]}}
                     1 .. shift || 1000;
    
sub by_locale {
    my $a_type;
    my $b_type;
    $a_type = 1 if ($a->{'fld_type'} =~ /local/i);
    $a_type = 2 if ($a->{'fld_type'} =~ /state/i);
    $a_type = 3 if ($a->{'fld_type'} =~ /national/i);
    $b_type = 1 if ($b->{'fld_type'} =~ /local/i);
    $b_type = 2 if ($b->{'fld_type'} =~ /state/i);
    $b_type = 3 if ($b->{'fld_type'} =~ /national/i);
    $a_type <=> $b_type;
}

my $order = "\0local\0state\0national\0";
sub by_locale_b {
    index ($order, "\0" . lc ($a -> {fld_type}) . "\0") <=>
    index ($order, "\0" . lc ($b -> {fld_type}) . "\0")
}
                       
our (@knowmad, @abigail, @borisz, @pirate);
    
cmpthese  -1  => {
    knowmad   => '@knowmad = sort by_locale @advocates',
    abigail   => 'my %bucket;
                  map {push @{$bucket {$_ -> {fld_type}}} => $_} @advo
+cates;
                  @abigail = map {@{$bucket {$_}}} qw /Local State Nat
+ional/;',
    borisz    => 'my %h = (National => 3, State => 2, Local => 1);
                  @borisz = sort {$h {$a -> {fld_type}} <=>
                                  $h {$b -> {fld_type}}} @advocates;',
    pirate    => '@pirate = map {$_ -> [1]}
                            sort {$a -> [0] <=> $b -> [0]}
                            map  {[lc ($_ -> {fld_type}), $_]} @advoca
+tes',
    browseruk => '@browseruk = sort by_locale_b @advocates',
};

    
__END__
            Rate   knowmad browseruk    borisz    pirate   abigail
knowmad   39.4/s        --      -48%      -70%      -83%      -92%
browseruk 75.5/s       91%        --      -42%      -67%      -85%
borisz     130/s      229%       72%        --      -43%      -74%
pirate     229/s      480%      203%       76%        --      -53%
abigail    491/s     1147%      551%      279%      115%        --

[download]

Abigail

In reply to Re: Efficiently sorting array by non-alpha strings by Abigail-II
in thread Efficiently sorting array by non-alpha strings by knowmad

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