A significant portion of the Americans fighting for terrorist group ISIL are Minnesota natives.
This statistic has begun to hurt Minnesota Democrat Al Franken's re-election, according to a report from ABC News.
More than a dozen of the nearly 100 Americans believed to have joined ISIS, including several women, hail from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, according to federal authorities. Many are recruited from the area's large Somali population, but the recruits are not confined to Somalis.
Douglas McCain, the first American killed fighting for ISIS, was also a Minnesota native. McCain's friend, Troy Kastigar, also died this year while fighting with ISIS.
Mike McFadden, the Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota, is aggressively seizing on the closer-to-home terror threat in his uphill quest to defeat Democrat Sen. Al Franken.
Franken has taken some public actions to stem ISIL recruiting in his state but his opponent isn't satisfied.
Franken, a Democrat running for a second term, wrote a letter to the Department of Justice on Sept. 4 asking Attorney General Eric Holder to address ISIS recruitment in Minnesota, which McFadden called "a day late and a dollar short."
"Talk is cheap," McFadden said. "Minnesota kids continue to be recruited. There has not been any policy put in place to stop this."