Kay Granger, who broke barriers as Fort Worth's first woman mayor and went on to become the first Republican woman elected to Congress from Texas, died Sunday, Aug. 2, at age 83. Her family and former colleagues in Fort Worth and Washington have spent the past several days remembering a career that spanned more than three decades of public service.
Granger's path to national prominence began in Fort Worth city government, where voters elected her mayor in 1991. She served until 1995, becoming the first woman to hold the office in the city's history. From that post she won the open congressional seat for Texas's 12th District in 1996 and was sworn in on Jan. 3, 1997 — the first Republican woman Texas had ever sent to the U.S. House.
Over 28 years in Congress, Granger built a reputation as a defense and appropriations specialist with a particular focus on the Fort Worth-area defense industry. In 2011 she co-founded the bipartisan Joint Strike Fighter Caucus to protect funding for the F-35 fighter jet program, much of which is assembled at the Lockheed Martin plant in her west Fort Worth district. In 2017 she became the first woman to chair the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, a position from which she helped steer a $9.3 billion purchase of F-35 jets in 2018.
Granger's career reached its high point in January 2023, when she became the first Republican woman to chair the full House Appropriations Committee — one of the most powerful posts in Congress, controlling the annual flow of federal spending across every agency. She had been the committee's ranking Republican since 2019. Granger stepped down as chair in April 2024, having guided the fiscal year 2024 funding process through a particularly contentious Congress, before health concerns led her to relinquish the gavel earlier than planned; her son later confirmed she had been diagnosed with dementia and had moved into a Fort Worth assisted-living facility. She retired from the House in January 2025 after 28 years representing Tarrant County.
Tributes arrived quickly from both parties. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, who succeeded her, mourned her passing and honored what he called her trailblazing legacy. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the committee's top Democrat, praised Granger as a strong, dedicated public servant who worked across the aisle, saying the committee will miss her tenacity and dedication. In Fort Worth, local officials and community leaders have pointed to her decades of work securing federal funding for healthcare centers across Tarrant County as part of a legacy that extended well beyond her defense-policy specialty.
For Tarrant County readers, Granger's death closes out a chapter of local political history that began well before many current residents arrived. She was, by any measure, a pioneer — the city's first female mayor and the state's first Republican congresswoman — whose career illustrates how far a local official's influence can reach when it's built on constituent service and institutional relationships sustained over decades. No public funeral arrangements had been announced in initial reporting; readers can expect updates from Fort Worth officials and the Granger family in the coming days. No cause of death has been publicly disclosed.