Former Texas Congresswoman Dies at 83

Kay Granger, the first Republican woman from Texas to be elected to the US House of Representatives and who served for nearly three decades, died Sunday at the age of 83, her son JD Granger said. House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a post on X that throughout her career, Granger "broke barriers for women in public service." He added that she "was a dear friend who will be greatly missed." Granger, who began her career as a high school teacher and a businesswoman, accomplished many firsts as a politician, the AP reports. She was the first woman elected mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, and the first Republican woman to chair one of the most powerful committees in Congress, the House Appropriations Committee.

First elected to the House in 1996, she did not seek reelection in 2024 and experienced worsening "health challenges" in her final months in Congress, according to a statement her office released in December 2024. Granger, who didn't cast a vote in Washington after July 2024, didn't specify or elaborate on those health challenges but said in the statement that frequent travel to Washington had become "both difficult and unpredictable" since early September of that year.

Granger graduated from Texas Wesleyan University in 1965 and considered a career in fashion design but instead followed her mother into teaching. To earn more money after a divorce, Granger worked from home selling insurance and eventually built a successful business that she managed for more than two decades. She got her political start serving on Fort Worth's zoning commission and then won office to the city council. She went on to win election as the city's first female mayor, serving from 1991 to 1995. In 1996, she was recruited by both parties to run for the House under their banner, and she won as a Republican.