(NewsNation) — U.S. Rep Kay Granger, R-Texas, has been residing at a senior living facility, and a family member says she has been experiencing some dementia issues, according to media reports.
Kay Granger announced last November she would not seek re-election, and in March of this year she resigned from the House Appropriations Committee. However, she has been missing votes in Washington, D.C. since the summer. Her roll call vote page shows her last vote being on July 24.
Her son, Brandon Granger, told the Dallas Morning News that his mother is at Tradition Senior Living in Fort Worth. While the Dallas Express was first to report that she was living such a facility, Brandon Granger pushed back on the outlet’s assertion that she is in memory care.
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Tradition does have a memory care community, but Kay Granger is in the independent living facility, her son said.
Tradition, when asked for comment by NewsNation, stated it does not “release the names of our residents.”
Brandon Granger said the representative did this because she wanted to be in a more active community with other older people.
“She’s in a building with a lot of other folks her age that are super active that she really loves,” Brandon Granger told the Dallas Morning News. “She has exercise classes, she gets to be around people all the time. It’s wonderful for her for this point in life.”
However, he did also say to the Dallas Morning News that Kay Granger started “having some dementia issues late in the year.”
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NewsNation has left messages for Kay Granger’s offices. In a statement to the Dallas Morning News, she acknowledged that since early September, health issues have made travel to Washington, D.C. “both difficult and unpredictable.”
“As many of my family, friends, and colleagues have known, I have been navigating some unforeseen health challenges over the past year,” Kay Granger said in the statement.
Kay Granger became the first Republican woman from Texas elected to the House of Representatives in 1996. Before that, she served for five years as Fort Worth’s first female mayor.
Social media users have criticized the representative, and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of Philadelphia said on X that her “long absence reveals the problem with a Congress that rewards seniority and relationships more than merit and ideas.”
“We need term limits,” Khanna wrote. “We need to get big money out of politics so a new generation of Americans can run and serve.”
