Bill Lawry, the newly elected member of the Clemmons Village Council, calls himself a “died-in-the-wool lassiez-faire capitalist.”

He wasn’t sure that he was going to claim one of three available spots against five experienced candidates because he didn’t know if the voters wanted what he was going to sell: fiscal conservatism expressed as a smaller, less intrusive, less expansive government.

“So I started canvassing door-to-door,” said Lawry, a political newcomer in Clemmons who won in his first bid for council, “and after a month or so as I was crossing a street in my subdivision I found myself awash with the message: ‘You’re doing the right thing. Keep going.’ ”

And that’s what he did. So Lawry continued with his plan and was encouraged by a high-acceptance rate with his 30-second doorstep speech.

“I didn’t know that I would win election, just that I was being guided to stay in the zone to do the right thing,” Lawry said. “I wasn’t absolutely sure my team had won anything but a personal victory until the complete results became available Tuesday night.”

Lawry said that his stand against the bond referendum in 2011 was a big reason that he won last week, placing third behind incumbents Mike Rogers and Mary Cameron.

And he thinks his philosophy will help him make a difference on the council.

“As an advocate for individual rights, self-reliance and small government, I’ll collaborate to manage our budget and our process so we don’t get maneuvered on to the slippery slope of financial ruin that Detroit and many other cities that can’t blame the auto makers or unions, etc. are experiencing,” he said. “I’ll be working against any forces that are trying to make state and local government irrelevant. I’ll dig in to identify propositions that attempt to ‘socialize the risk (or cost) while privatizing the profit.’ This is the essence of ‘crony capitalism,’ and like the founders of our country I’m against it.”

However, Lawry realizes that folks in Clemmons “seem to want more greenways, sidewalks and maybe even bike paths, so if there’s a real mandate for them, then budget-willing, I’ll help.”

Lawry has some ideas to help make improvements along Lewisville-Clemmons Road.

“As I understand it. NCDOT has pulled back from adding medians to Lewisville-Clemmons Road for safety reasons. so I’ll be supporting cooperative efforts among the businesses and the village to reduce driveway cuts,” he said. “The state is going to install a traffic light on Lewisville-Clemmons Road at Panera Bread. I think this would be a perfect time to synchronize and computerize the traffic lights on our major roadway to improve throughput and reduce congestion.”

As for adding businesses to expand the tax base, Lawry said: “We seem to have a small outreach effort already underway, and I’ll be happy to assist in bringing in more Clemmons-appropriate businesses.”

Another item he would like to see implemented while Clemmons explores redoing its website is to make local government more transparent by immediately publishing a complete detailed council meeting agenda on the existing platform.

Lawry said that Clemmons is a wonderful village that may not look like mythical Mayberry but shares the theme of having no major problems.