Rangel’s Beach Buddy

The controversial labor lawyer whose company gave embattled Rep. Charles Rangel an interest-free mortgage on a Dominican Republic villa is a longtime friend who poured more than half a million dollars into campaigns and causes near and dear to the congressman’s heart.

Theodore Woodrow Kheel, 94, a player in some 30,000 labor disputes in a 70-year career, and his late wife, Ann, donated more than $17,000 to Rangel’s congressional campaigns and $52,000 to a Rangel-run political action committee since 1990, federal filings show.

The Ann S. Kheel Charitable Trust last year gave $440,000 to support the building of the Charles B. Rangel Center at the City College of New York – the largest single donation the trust has made in its four-year history.

Read more: (Isabel Vincent, “Charlie’s Beach Buddy,” New York Post, 9/07/08)