Alma Rangel is a loyal and supportive wife who was scorned and dumped after her husband found new success, her lawyer told The Post.
Just a month after he took the reins of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee last year, Rep. Charles Rangel accused his wife of “cruel and inhuman treatment” and “constructive abandonment,” which refers to a lack of sexual intimacy, in divorce papers.
Stunned and heartbroken, Alma decided to wage battle against her powerful hubby of 42 years, disputing his alleged grounds and demanding that a jury decide the case, court papers show.
“She felt she was a beautiful wife. He’d have to prove otherwise to a jury of New Yorkers, not just a judge,” her lawyer, Sherri Donovan, said.
“She did not want this divorce. She wanted to stay married to him. She’s been a loyal wife for a long time.”
As the case quietly made its way through the courts, the trouble between the couple began to come to light.
In February, after the congressman endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, Alma jabbed him politically and declared her support for Barack Obama.
In July, when it was revealed that the Rangels occupied three rent-controlled apartments in a Harlem high-rise – and that the congressman used a fourth as a campaign office – he described an arrangement in which he used a studio apartment next to two that he shared with his wife.
“The apartment next door became vacant, and I got that apartment, and I used that as my den and my office. When I came in late at night from Washington, I go in there first,” he said. “It’s a studio apartment. It has its own kitchen and bathroom and no bedroom.”
A month later, his wife was brought into the spotlight again when The Post revealed that Rangel had not reported rental income on a home he owns at a Dominican resort called Punta Cana. Rangel’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, told The Post that his client thought he didn’t have to declare the income for a variety of reasons, including that his wife handled their finances.
On Sept. 10, the same day Rangel held a press conference to admit he owed taxes on the Punta Cana house, the Rangels “discontinued” their divorce case. A pool of jurors waiting to start the trial was abruptly dismissed.
In a telephone call following the withdrawal of the case, Rangel told The Post: “There is no divorce. Whatever differences that I’ve had with my wife have been reconciled.”
Rangel is now under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for several alleged breaches, including failure to report more than $75,000 in rental income from the Dominican beach house.
Last week, Alma defended the Punta Cana tax snafu as an honest mistake, explaining that she was a “partner” in the villa and had found it “very, very difficult to get information” from the resort management. “They don’t keep good records,” she said.
She denied any deceit by her husband. “He’s a good man who worked hard and made a good reputation. Somebody dropped the ball. It wasn’t intentional.”
Donovan said, “It’s difficult for a woman who’s been married to a powerful politician, who has been there from the beginning, helped build him up, [to] suddenly get served with papers. It takes away from her identity, her status and her contributions.”
Alma made it clear last week that she never wanted to break up.
Asked whether divorce was off the table, she said, “It was never on the table.”
The Rangels tied the knot on July 26, 1964. Charlie was a lawyer in Harlem with political ambitions. She was a native Floridian who became a social worker in New York. They had met at a dance at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom.
Three years later, Charlie won election to the state Assembly. Three years after that, he was elected to Congress, defeating Adam Clayton Powell Jr. He took office in January 1971.
In his 2007 memoir, “And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since,” Charlie admitted he hadn’t thought about how the win would affect his family. He and Alma had a son and a daughter.
“She was the one involved with the carpools, baby-sitting pools, and all those domestic decisions I hated making time for,” he wrote.
“In the heat of the race . . . it barely occurred to me that I’d be relocating to Washington. So it went without saying that I had no particular vision for my family life as a congressman. Alma would supply that vision.”
The couple bought a “dilapidated but magnificent” house on Colorado Avenue and moved to DC. They kept a second home in a Harlem brownstone that belonged to Charlie’s grandfather but sold it several years ago. They also sold a Florida condo in 2006.
Before he betrayed her in court, Alma spoke lovingly of her husband. In a 2003 coffee-table book, “Style and Grace,” on beautiful homes of African-Americans, she described him as romantic and sentimental.
“Charlie has always given me yellow roses,” she said, explaining the bouquets in their Lenox Terrace living room. “When we were dating and he didn’t have much money, he’d present me with a single perfect one as faithfully as clockwork.”
Alma’s lawyer, Donovan, called her client’s plight “very typical of women who have been there on the way up.”
“When men become successful,” she added, “they try to dump their wives and deny them the financial and other benefits that go with success and celebrity.”
Asked whether Rangel’s ethics problems had anything to do with dropping the divorce, Donovan said, “Who knows? Maybe that made him real. Or maybe he realized he needs her.”
In a statement, Charles Rangel’s attorney, Davis, said, “Mr. and Mrs. Rangel were together for 42 years, and they are still together. It’s very unfair for The Post to do this story and sad that it considers this legitimate journalism.”
He added that the timing of the reconciliation had nothing to do with the ethics probe.
“It was only a personal situation,” he said.
Additional reporting by Janon Fisher