Only Two Donors Show Park Cities Pride
I’ve been entering the campaign contributions for Court Alley, Morgan Meyer, and Chart Westcott into an Excel spreadsheet, so we can provide some analysis of the race for the Texas House District 108 seat in our upcoming March edition.
Donors are asked to list their home city, state, and ZIP code. We all know there are dozens if not hundreds of Park Cities residents giving money to these three Republicans’ campaigns, but most of those people list their home city as Dallas.
Only two of the 733 donations these men have received since July 1 are listed as coming from University Park or Highland Park. Our buddy Max Fuqua of UP gave $250 to Meyer on Jan. 3, and Robert Crawford of HP gave the same amount to Westcott on Jan. 16.
I thought Dallas was the official mailing address for HP & UP. That could be why it is listed as the “home” city.
Don’t you mean the race for the Republican nomination? Or are you also including Leigh Bailey in your analysis?
I did mean the race for the GOP nomination. We’re leaving Leigh out of this one; there’ll be plenty of time to cover her campaign once the Republican nominee is determined.
When I first moved here about 18 years ago I was told that officially HP and UP arent recognized by the postal service. If you go to the usps.gov website and try to look up your address using HP or UP, it wont find the zip code , but if you try with Dallas as the city it works.
Yes, as alluded to above, they’re writing their mailing addresses, as almost everyone would do, by force of habit. For a Park Cities address, the city should be listed as “Dallas,” per the US Postal Service. At least, that’s what I’ve always been told, since the late 1970s, up to and including at Leadership UP classes just a few years back. Those rare birds who list “UP” or “HP” may indeed be showing rightful pride, but my sense is that it’s considered a bit “over the top” by most others. Like an attorney who feels the need to list “Esq.” after his or her name. While not technically incorrect, it “just isn’t done.”
OK, this issue has actually caused me real anxiety recently. The other day I sat in the DPS office filling out paperwork for my drivers license renewal. The form asked for my address. I grew up in UP (and also know about the USPS “preferred address” thing) and so, like others, I have written “Dallas, TX 75205” thousands of times and do it almost by reflex. But as I sat there with my pen poised above this form, I suddenly imagined some bureaucrat accusing me of putting false information on an official form by listing “Dallas” instead of “University Park.” But then I thought about the USPS website saying that “Dallas” was the USPS-preferred term. I sat frozen for minutes before finally deciding to put down “University Park” on the form. I still can’t decide which one the State of Texas actually wanted me to use on that form. I have actually lost sleep over this.
Nothing uppity about it. Way back I started listing UP as my location on sales tax forms for my business at the request of the City. They were losing sales tax dollars to Dallas when business owners listed that city as their location. The problem has since been fixed, but the habit just stuck with me and really, the post office is fine with it.