Kay Granger, first Republican woman from Texas to serve in the House, has died at age 83

DALLAS (AP) — Kay Granger, the first Republican woman from Texas to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and who served for nearly three decades, died Sunday at the age of 83, her son J.D. 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. 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 followed her mother into teaching. She worked in the Birdville school district for nine years, teaching English literature and journalism, according to a profile compiled for the publication “Women in Congress, 1917-2006.”

A divorce would lead to a career change. To earn more money, Granger worked from home selling insurance. Her mother, Alliene Mullendore, who moved in with Granger after a stroke, helped keep an eye on the kids. Granger eventually built a successful insurance business that she managed for more than two decades.

“I was a high school teacher with three children, a 2-year and 6-month-old twins, and my husband left,” Granger told The Hill in a 2008 profile. “It’s the reason I talk so much to working mothers … you just fight your way through the day.”

Granger 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.

Granger’s “Code: Blue” programs included citizen patrol initiatives that halved the rampant crime rate and partnerships with the private sector that drew major businesses to the city. Her resuscitation of Fort Worth’s flagging economic fortunes drew national attention.

In 1996, she was recruited by both parties to run for the House under their banner, and she won as a Republican.

Upon entering Congress, she was named to an advisory board that consulted then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. She also received seats on three committees: Budget, House Oversight, and Transportation and Infrastructure. She resigned those assignments as part of accepting a seat on the Appropriations Committee.

On the committee, she focused on defense spending, including championing the production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in Fort Worth.

When Republicans took charge of the House in 2023, Granger became the committee’s chair, where she sought to enact steeper non-defense spending cuts than the top-line numbers House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden agreed to as part of avoiding an economically disastrous government default.