Republican Rep. Kay Granger, who has missed 100 percent of votes in the House since July 24, has been an assisted living and memory care home, according to a report.
Staff writer Carlos Turcios wrote in The Dallas Express that he “received a tip from a Granger constituent who shared that the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood.” So he began to look for Granger.
Turcios reported that calls to Granger’s D.C. and district office went straight to voicemail. He found her district office vacant with “no sign of the office continuing to be occupied.” Employees in the building where her district office was located said that her staff closed the office before Thanksgiving.
Following the tip he received, Turcios visited the assisted living and memory care facility where two employees confirmed she has been living there.
“This is her home,” Tradition Senior Living’s Assistant Executive Director Taylor Manziel told Turcios in a video posted to The Dallas Express website.
Granger was seen in public on Nov. 18 in Washington, D.C., for the unveiling of her new portrait that now hangs in the House Appropriations Committee main hearing room. Granger became chair in Jan. 2023 and announced she would be stepping down from the role in March of this year. She announced she would not seek re-election to Congress in Oct. 2023.
The page on Granger’s congressional website that once listed all of Granger’s votes now shows an error message: “The page you have requested does not exist or is undergoing routine maintenance.”
A snapshot of that page captured by the Internet Archive on Dec. 16, 2024, reveals the last time Granger cast a vote was July 24, 2024, when she opposed an amendment that would reduce the salary of Ya-Wei (Jake) Li, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs, to $1. She missed the rest of the votes that day and has not voted since.
Rolling Stone emailed Granger’s communications director but received an out of office message stating they will have “limited access to email until” Jan. 2, 2025.
Granger is not the only lawmaker who has been reported to suffer from memory issues. Numerous 2022 reports said that staffers for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, at the time in her late eighties, were attempting to hide the senator’s declining memory. Publicly, Feinstein struggled to remember names of her colleagues and often forgot recent interactions.
In recent weeks, both House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Emeritus Mitch McConnell, both of whom are also in their eighties, suffered a fall. Pelosi returned home four days ago following a hip replacement at a U.S. military hospital in Germany that was necessary after she fell and injured herself at an event in Luxembourg. McConnell fell during a Senate Republican lunch where he sprained his wrist and cut his face. McConnell was reported to be working from home following the incident.
Some have also criticized House Democrats for selecting 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connelly, who was recently diagnosed with cancer, to serve as chair of the House Oversight Committee rather than the much younger Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
At the beginning of the 118th Congress, the average age of House members was 57.9 years, and the average age of Senate members was 64 per the Congressional Research Service. A 2023 poll found that 40 percent of voters supported an maximum age limit of 75 for members of Congress while 23 percent endorse a maximum age limit of 65. Twenty-two percent opposed setting any age limit.
