2011 Mother Jones Article Discusses the GOP Stronghold of Highland Park

Editor’s preface: If any resident of Highland Park would like to rebut this article, please feel free to add a comment below. We prefer a balanced approach to all topics.

It’s fair to call 75205, the zip code for most of Highland Park, the most enthusiastically Republican enclave in the country. Among the two-dozen zip codes that donated the most money to candidates and political parties last year, 75205 gave the highest share—77 percent—to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It also gave Republicans more hard cash, $2.4 million, than all but four other zips nationwide. Affluent, insular, and intensely sure of itself, Highland Park is the red-state counterpart of, say, Berkeley. It’s a place where, one native son half-jokes, friends might ask one another, “Do you want to come over for barbecue after we go vote for Mitt Romney?” People in the surrounding city of Dallas, where I grew up, call it the Bubble.

“We don’t need the government to do things for us—that’s why the town is very, very independent,” says Ray Washburne, a co-owner of the Highland Park Village mall and a native “Parkie.” In 2004, Washburne and George Seay III (pronounced “see”), a grandson of Texas’ first 20^th-century Republican governor, cofounded Legacy, a group of 200 families that “have been successful in their careers and want to be involved in the political process.” The group hosts aspiring GOP presidential candidates at a yearly summer retreat in Colorado, where they “network with other people who have been trying to push along the conservative, free-enterprise cause.” Washburne befriended former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty at an event in 2008 and later joined his short-lived presidential campaign.

Source: Mother Jones