Midge Costanza : Carter Aide Recalls Life in the Fishbowl

Looking back over her controversial 20 months as assistant to President Jimmy Carter, Margaret (Midge) Costanza, now a vice president of a West Los Angeles film company, said that she sometimes forgot that people often are taken seriously when they are trying to be funny.

That is what happened one day when she left her White House office to talk with a man who had just completed a cross-country horseback ride to protest conditions in the nation’s environment.

“I looked at the horse and up at the guy,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Congratulations, I’m so happy that you successfully reached your goal of coming across the country on such an important issue as the environment.”’

Then casting a glance at the horse’s rear end she added, “Oh, and I see you brought your congressman with you.”

Famed for One-Liners

It was one of the many one-liners that made the feisty woman from Rochester, N.Y., famous during her turbulent stint at the Carter White House. Her critics, who had already denounced her outspoken positions on abortion and homosexual rights, took the opportunity to attack her once again, this time for degrading the Congress.

Today, six years after resigning her White House post, she still pokes fun at politicians. But now she is also wooing them, conservatives and liberals alike. As a vice president of Alan Landsburg Productions in West Los Angels, she is in charge of a new division that will make short films and commercials for corporate clients and political candidates.

It is Costanza’s first full-time job since she resigned from the Carter staff in 1978. She moved to Los Angeles 4 1/2 years ago to write a book and to get away from some of the political pressures of the East Coast. Her journey, however, offered little relief. She goes East at least once a month and continues to champion the same liberal causes she did in the past.

“When I took this job,” she said, “I didn’t give up my philosophy, my beliefs, my values. I left a job at the White House because I wouldn’t do that.”

Film Project

Costanza joined Alan Landsburg last year when the movie producer became interested in producing a one-hour situation comedy based on her months in the White House. Instead, the two began developing a film division specializing in corporate films and political campaigns.

Costanza, a 51-year-old former vice mayor of Rochester, said she hopes to run for office again, “but I don’t know where, I don’t know what office.”

Last year, she said, she gave “serious consideration to running in the presidential election” and earlier this year she talked with supporters about runing for the seat of retiring U.S. Rep. Barber Conable (R-N.Y.), who defeated her in 1974.

“Being a politician is like being a doctor. You can retire, but you’ll always be a doctor,” she said.

Costanza describes herself as a grass-roots person with the vocal delivery of a preacher. She has campaigned on behalf of Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and Mayor Tom Bradley when he was running for governor. Next month she plans to unveil a new talent when she sings at a fund-raiser for Steve Schulte, who is running for the Los Angeles City Council in the 13th District.

IN this year’s presidential race, she is supporting Gary Hart but says she would prefer any of the three Democratic candidates over Ronald Reagan.

The 5-foot-tall, 104-pound Costanza drives a small foreign car and prefers to dress casually. She is unmarried and lives in a Los Angeles apartment with three cats and a dog.

It was during her 1974 congressional race that Costanza first met then-Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter.

Call From Carter

“This man with a Southern accent called me on the phone and said, ‘Hi, my name is Jimmy Carter. I’m the governor of Georgia and I’ve been looking over your position and I find that you and I are compatible,”’ she said. “I thought I had a nut on the phone. A Southerner compatible with me.”

She accepted his support. And then in 1976, when Carter ran for the presidency, she returned the favor. Carter appointed her co-chair of his New York campaign. After he was elected, she was the only Northerner appointed to the White House staff. She was named presidential assistant for public liaison, a position Carter dubbed his “window to the nation.”

Costanza frequently collected the petitions of demonstrators who marched outside the White House gates. “Soon,” she said, “every time someone came to the White House the guards would pick up the phone and call me. Once a nude guy came to the White House gate. One of the guards picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, Midge, I think you have an appointment.”’

She met with groups representing women, the young, senior citizens, veterans, minorities and the handicapped and she served as an advocate of federal funding for abortions and the equal rights amendment.

She once organized a conference of welfare mothers that led President Carter to increase the funding for a welfare reform bill. Her success in influencing Carter to raise the amount of money in the bill “still gives me goose bumps,” she said.

She also invited gay activists to hold their first meeting in the White House on March 26, 1977.

“It was the first time we were allowed to confer inside the White House instead of picket outside,” said Jean O’Leary, executive director of the 6,000-member National Gay Rights Advocates. “That meeting opened the doors for gay rights to be discussed on a national level.”

Costanza became known for her quick humor and breezy retorts which, at times, made other staff members uneasy.

“I’ll never change my humor,” she said. “I never use it to harm anyone and that includes all the things I said about Jimmy Carter. He knew every single joke I told about him and he laughed harder than anyone.

“Once I told an audience that I didn’t mind working for a President who thought he was reborn, but my question was, why did he want to come back as himself? He really liked that one.”