THE FLY in the ointment for Hillary Clinton's New York Senate chances next year is her husband's decision to offer clemency to 16 Puerto Rican nationalists serving long sentences for a campaign of violence against the US.
Mrs Clinton says she does not support her husband's decision to free them. The president's decision to offer clemency to the prisoners has changed the odds for his wife's chances. Although some citizens interpreted his offer as an attempt to help his wife win the Senate seat, this may not have been the case. One reason for the clemency offer is the long sentences - up to 90 years - that the Puerto Rican nationalists are serving. All the prisoners now accepting the offer have been behind bars for 18 years. They include women as well as men.
None of the prisoners being offered clemency killed or injured anyone, according to their lawyers. To take advantage of the clemency offer they must "renounce terrorism".
Nearly all are willing to do this. Twelve prisoners have accepted the president's offer of clemency. Two prisoners rejected the offer and will serve out their sentences - if they live that long. One is serving a 90-year sentence. One man was condemned to 60 years and a woman to 90 years. Two others are serving sentences of 75 and 55 years without hope of release.
The aim of the FALN, the Spanish initials for the Armed Forces of National Liberation, the Puerto Rican nationalist movement, is to make Puerto Rico an independent state. The United States seized the island in 1898 during the Spanish-American war.
Puerto Rico, which Columbus discovered and explored on his second transatlantic crossing, was ruled by Spain for five centuries.
Twelve of the 16 prisoners accepted conditional clemency, their lawyers said. They are, or were, members of the FALN. They say Puerto Rico, with its democratically elected government, is a colony of the United States.
The White House Press Secretary, Mr Joe Lockhart, said of the Clinton deal: "The president expects all those who accept the conditional clemency grant to abide fully by its terms, including refraining from the use or advocacy of the use of violence for any purpose and obeying all the statutory conditions of parole."
There are close to one million American citizens of Puerto Rican extraction in New York. They are a large bloc of the state's Democratic voters. They are unlikely to vote for someone who wants to keep Puerto Ricans behind bars indefinitely.
New York's Puerto Rican politicians are upset by her Hillary Clinton's stand. It is not in their interest to show sympathy with the FALN revolutionaries. They deny engaging in acts of violence against the US, but one detects little sympathy for the prisoners' plight.
The September 13th issue of US News and World Report asks: ". . . did Bill offer clemency to the Puerto Rican nationalists to help Hillary with an important constituency? Some Jewish activists in New York think he did, and now they're lobbying the First Lady to lobby the president for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Jay Pollard."
A lawyer fears that, on release, the Puerto Ricans will be harassed by local, state and federal police.
Gloria Quinones, one of the prisoners to be freed, took issue with one of the president's conditions that "none of the prisoners meet or mingle after their release".
She told the New York Times that "two of the prisoners to be released, Alicia Rodriguez and Ida Luz Rodriguez, are sisters".