‘A Feminist In The White House’ Chronicles Life, Work Of Activist Midge Costanza

This is KPBS Midday Edition I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. She was an unlikely candidate to break the political glass ceiling at the White House back in the 1970s. Midge Costanza took on the job of assistant to the president for public liaison under President. Jimmy Carter. At the new book describes the standard was a feminist, a woman without a college education and for a short time one of the most influential women in America. At the rise and fall in Washington Midge Costanza settled in San Diego and it is a San Diego State Association of women's study who has written her life study. Author Doreen Mattingly joins me now to talk about her book -- of feminist in the White House. Thank you pixie at remind us how unusual it was back in the 1970s a president to pick a woman as one of his White House advisers. Well she was the very first woman to be named to the inner circle in a position of assistant to the president. It was a newsworthy item and in fact for Carter it was a display of his -- the promises he made to the women's movement that he appointed a woman. It seems an odd fit card and could stand for, doesn't it? Well, they became friends when he was campaigning for can stand that. She was from Rochester New York and was the first woman on the city Council there and she ran for Congress and 74. Campaign for her and the two just became fast friends. They were true friends. They really admired each other. He admired her speaking ability and her connection with the people and I think that they both were very moral people. They were both people who took politics very seriously and they really loved and admired each other. Now what issues did Midge Costanza bring to the front burner that were not there before? Definitely gay rights. She had a meeting with the Gay task force in the White House in 1977 were for the first time within the White House the issues that have animated the political agenda since were raised including marriage equality, gays in the military, immigration, all those issues were raised in that was just at the beginning of the anti-gay movement so that was very controversial. Of course the equal rights amendment which people were still believing would be ratified an abortion. She was very much for federal funding of abortion and disappointed by the Hyde amendment which banned federal abortion which happened during the Carter administration. Now what people read your blog of feminist in the White House that will come across the idea that may be it was her style sometimes that did not lend itself to her position as being in her position for a very long time. That could be true. She was a working-class woman from upstate New York who had been in the property development industry with all-time work politics and she had a taste some people love and some people hate it. Most of all she was marginalized within the Carter White House and she opted not to accept it. I'm just thinking of this fourth right Italian American woman who was outspoken in opinionated coming up against all of these sort of nice gentlemanly Georgia types. In the White House of Jimmy Carter. She was definitely an outsider in every way. In region, and gender, in politics, and at the city, in style. She did not like them and they did not like her. What she did have Carter skier and everybody knew that. They had that special relationship pixie acquainted things break down toxic fairly quickly. [ laughter ] I would say in the first summer in the summer of 1977 when she was in the White House. That is when she took -- made a public statement against Carter's support for the Hyde amendment as did many other pro-choice White House appointees and then when she thought she was off the record called on Carter to ask for the resignation of his aide Bert Lance because it was a national scandal around him at the time and she thought it was off the record but it was on the record and that really caused a lot of division. Whatever style differences that stood between her and Carter's other aides, that really led to the split that she could never heal. In the book, what did you learn about her time in the White House that was at previously known? That what I did not know and what I had not read and have never read about although there might be people who know it was the extent to which Carter made promises to the women's movement and hired exceptional feminist and appointed them to positions but himself -- he tried to stay in the middle between the feminist and the newly organizing religious right so on social issues Carter and his male aides thought that he could kind of straddle the divide and Costanza was the leading voice to say -- that is not possible, sir. You have to choose and you have to go left and you have to let go of those religious voters that brought you in a Carter was a born again Christian himself and he wasn't able to make that choice and so when it comes to social issues -- when it comes to women's issues in the Carter White House, it was really the beginning of the culture wars, the beginning of that split that Carter try to straddle that meant he did not give support really to either side and neither side supported him in 1980. Well after her time in the White House Midge Costanza eventually moved to San Diego wish you lived at the rest of her life. She died in 2010. What drew her to San Diego and tell us what she did when she was here. Sure pixie actually moved to Los Angeles first and she went there to write her memoirs which he never did and I ended up -- I was helping her with her memoirs when she died just how I got her papers and was tasked with the book and then she moved to San Diego, kind of burned out on Los Angeles, moved with her partner at the time who had a job here and so she came in 92 and then ran Barbara boxer's campaign in San Diego and really found a home for herself within progressive politics in San Diego pixie that Costanza was right in the center of the emerging culture wars. How is that history framing the debate over reproductive rights and LG BT writes that we are having today? Almost completely -- to the point that it is hard to remember that for example it abortion and ERA used to be Republican issues. We are so accustomed to the to the contemporary framing of them. So this is a very exciting and interesting type to read about because really would Carter supported the Hyde amendment for example everybody is like just be quiet about it it is a Republican issues of the Hyde amendment is actually an amendment to a funding bill that passed regularly in Congress bans any federal funds for abortion. And that has been in place since 1977. And so it has been a way of putting access to abortion for women declivity that are on Medicare. It was very contentious. It is still very contentious. There is still efforts in Congress to eliminate it and restore it to the same status of other medical procedures. You don't need to weigh in on it. This was an internal data within Republicans. So what I was really interested in was the way the Democratic Party changed and embrace women's issues and came the party of gay rights during that. Of time and of course now we are so accustomed to this intense polarization around this issue that they were really used as flag issues are potentially abortion -- particularly abortion during Carter's presidency to draw away some of the white evangelical Southern you know voters from the Democratic Party who would always -- who had always been Democrats and Republicans were successful using particularly abortion and then gay rights to pull these voters into the Republican Party. Why is it important to tell Midge consider this story It is important for a couple reasons. It is important to me because she was my friend and I discovered that there was almost nothing written about her despite how important she was in it was a reminder that women's history is erased so quickly. And I think it is also important because we like to tell the story of female first who are successful and fried with no problems, but the truth is that most women who went first -- most blacks went first, suffered a lot. They were marginalized, they struggle. It were not always successful and there were very high costs, very high personal cost to the sexism or racism that they encountered and that is what I think this is partly a story about and I think we need to keep telling those stories and not pretend that somehow the barriers in this case of women's leadership in politics were somehow easily crossed and that there was no human sacrifice involved. I have been speaking with Doreen Mattingly. She will be reading from her book a feminist in the White House at an event next Monday night June 20 at the partnership for advancement of new Americans in city Heights. Dohring, thank you. Thank you so much.