Taylor Newton Lelewski (Hickory City Council Ward 5, North Carolina, candidate 2025)
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Taylor Newton Lelewski ran for election to the Hickory City Council to represent Ward 5 in North Carolina. Lelewski was on the ballot in the primary on October 7, 2025.[source]
Lelewski completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
[1]Biography
Taylor Newton Lelewski provided the following biographical information via Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey on August 14, 2025:
- Birth date: June 26, 1984
- PhD: University of Denver, 2010
- Profession: Professor
- Incumbent officeholder: No
- Campaign slogan: Politically independent. Locally experienced.
- Campaign website
- Campaign Facebook
Elections
General election
General election for Hickory City Council Ward 5
Arnita M. Dula and David Zagaroli ran in the general election for Hickory City Council Ward 5 on November 4, 2025.
Candidate | ||
 | Arnita M. Dula (Nonpartisan)  | |
| David Zagaroli (Nonpartisan) | ||
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for Hickory City Council Ward 5
Arnita M. Dula, Kevin Gaylord, Joshua Ledford, Taylor Newton Lelewski, and David Zagaroli ran in the primary for Hickory City Council Ward 5 on October 7, 2025.
Candidate | ||
| Arnita M. Dula (Nonpartisan) | |
 | Kevin Gaylord (Nonpartisan) | |
| Joshua Ledford (Nonpartisan) | ||
 | Taylor Newton Lelewski (Nonpartisan) | |
| David Zagaroli (Nonpartisan) | ||
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Election results
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Lelewski in this election.
Campaign themes
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Taylor Newton Lelewski completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Lelewski's responses.
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I’ve led community education initiatives at Lenoir-Rhyne University and currently serve as chair of the City of Hickory’s University City Commission. Alongside my family, I run a small apiary called Bearded Bee, selling honey to support local nonprofit organizations. This work has given me firsthand insight into a fundamental truth: building strong communities is essential for our local resilience.
I want to bring my professional skills, local experience, and hands-on service to City Council to help ensure opportunity and dignity are within reach for everyone who calls Hickory home.- We need strong communities where people can afford to live with dignity. The City of Hickory has taken important steps to support housing affordability, but there’s more to do. Affordable housing is one of the most urgent and complex challenges we face. As middle- and lower-income families face increasing financial pressures in these uncertain times, we need to use every tool in the toolbox, including exploring new and creative solutions, to ensure that people who live and work here can afford to stay here.
- We need strong communities where our local economy supports both residents and small businesses. Small businesses create jobs, shape our neighborhoods, and build a resilient local economy. But they also face serious challenges from rising rents to changing tariff policy and global economic uncertainty. That’s why local government must step up. Trivium Corporate Center has been a success in attracting larger employers to our area, but the time has come for Hickory to do more to intentionally support small business, especially in historically under-invested areas.
- We need strong communities where we treat one another as neighbors, not opponents. In many ways, local government is something we take for granted. That’s a good thing when it’s working well. Good local governance can feel invisible: services function, our economy grows, and communities thrive. But when things go wrong, or when people feel left out of the process, it becomes hard to know how to engage, especially for those who haven’t been involved before. That’s why it’s important to stay engaged even when we’re generally satisfied with how things are going. Trust and transparency don’t build themselves. The relationship between people and their government requires care and effort, especially in times of change.
When we build communities where people can afford to live with dignity, where our local economy works for residents and small businesses, and where we think of one another as neighbors, not opponents, we become more resilient and able to face challenges together.
The Dunning-Kruger refers to our tendency to overestimate our knowledge or abilities when we actually know very little about a subject. The key insight is that it takes a certain level of understanding to recognize what we don’t know.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2025 Elections
External links
Footnotes
