Concerns about members of Congress being too old resurfaced over the weekend after news that retiring U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, 81, was moving into a nursing home, her son said. Mr. Granger has not voted since July.
On Friday, the Dallas Express published the results of an investigation into Granger’s whereabouts, reporting that Granger (R-Texas) is currently living at Tradition Senior Living in Fort Worth, which provides memory care services. Granger’s son, Brandon Granger, said his mother is not in a memory care facility, but lives at Tradition Senior Living, according to the Dallas Morning News. The same outlet also reported that she said her son “will have dementia issues later this year.”
Reacting to the news on Sunday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said, “Kay Granger’s prolonged absence highlights the problem with a Congress that values seniority and relationships over merit and ideas.” We have sclerotic senility.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote Saturday that “American elder politics on both sides of politics is an utter embarrassment.”
Journalist Ken Krippenstein echoed these statements. In a post on Blue Sky, he argued that it shouldn’t be taboo for the media to point out when elected officials appear to be fading due to age. “One of the reasons we have a longevity society is because the news media is so reluctant to condemn the problem,” he wrote.
The median age of Congress has been on the rise in recent decades, according to a 2023 breakdown by The Washington Post. Last year, 48% of all members were baby boomers, and 19 members elected to the 118th Congress were members of the silent generation, or those born sometime between 1928 and 1945.
After President Joe Biden stepped down as the Democratic Party’s leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election amid widespread concerns that he was unfit to run following his disastrous performance in the debates. A parliamentary committee reshuffled some of the Democratic Party’s leadership and appointed young members. take over. But 35-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.N.Y.) failed in her bid to become the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. The person who hit her was 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer said the same thinking that led some members of Congress to support Connolly was also behind the Democratic loss of the White House on November 5th.
“Pricing seniority over politics and messaging is exactly how the Democratic Party got into this mess in the first place,” he wrote in X in mid-December.
