- Voters in Michigan’s 35th Senate District will cast ballots Tuesday to fill a seat that’s sat vacant for more than a year
- Democrat Chedrick Greene and Republican Jason Tunney are competing to replace US Rep. Kristin McDonald Rivet
- A Republican win would create a 19-19 tie in the state Senate, limiting Democratic policy making for the remainder of year
BAY CITY — On Tuesday, voters in the Great Lakes Bay region will have the power to do two things no one else can: Regain representation in the Michigan Senate and decide whether Democrats maintain their majority in the chamber.
The 35th Senate District seat in Midland, Bay and Saginaw counties has sat vacant for nearly 500 days. A special election win by Republican Jason Tunney would mean a 19-19 Senate tie for the remainder of the year.
This “is an election that sets the table for the whole state of Michigan as we go into this important election year,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday as she campaigned for Democrat Chedrick Greene, a Saginaw fire captain.
A GOP win would mean more partisan gridlock in Lansing, Whitmer suggested, arguing voters are already exhausted by dysfunction in Washington D.C.
Related:
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Greene and Tunney are competing to replace Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet, who resigned from the seat in early 2025 after she was elected to the US House.
Whitmer waited nearly eight months to even schedule the special election, which finally will be decided on Tuesday, a delay Republicans bemoaned as a political calculation allowing Democrats to maintain a 19-18 state Senate advantage for most of the current two-year session.
“I was paying taxes to the state of Michigan and I did not have a state senator representing me in the legislature,” Tunney, an attorney and the GOP nominee, said in a Tuesday interview with Bridge Michigan. “I was more than a little bit upset about that. I think that’s un-American and an abuse of executive authority.”
The Tuesday election has major implications for Lansing, where the Republican-led state House and Democrat-led state Senate have already been passing new laws at a historically slow rate.
“If Republicans win, there’s every reason to believe that things will get even slower on non-budgetary issues,” said John Sellek, a Republican strategist and CEO of the Lansing-based Harbor Strategic Public Affairs.
Whitmer, whose ability to pass laws during her final months in office may be on the line, said she’s optimistic local voters will elect Greene. The alternative, she acknowledged, could complicate her agenda in Lansing.
“We’ve seen that show in Washington DC, and it’s exhausting to all of us, right?” the governor told Bridge Michigan after the Get Out the Vote rally in Bay City.
“None of us wants another legislative body that can’t get the work done and can’t deliver for them, and that’s what I think is really at stake — in this election, and all the elections in the fall.”
Playing by the rules
McDonald Rivet won the 35th Senate District by 7 percentage points in 2022, but Republicans are optimistic they can flip it. Both parties have put significant energy and resources into the special election race.
While Democratic Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist would have the power to break any 19-19 ties in the Michigan Senate, experts say Republicans could still effectively block any bills they choose.
How?
“Republicans could play games,” said Sellek, the GOP strategist. “They could threaten to not cast a 19th vote, and therefore the bills would fail, because there would be no tie” for Gilchrist to break.
Under current rules, the lieutenant governor can only vote “when the senators are equally divided in their vote. The Michigan Constitution states that “no bill shall become a law” unless approved by “a majority of the members elected … and serving” in the House and Senate.
Republicans could also try to make the most of a tied Senate in other ways, Sellek added, like potentially keeping Gilchrist – Democrats’ nominee for secretary of state – off the campaign trail and in Lansing for voting.
What that would mean for policymaking in Lansing this year remains to be seen.
Lawmakers are already advancing state government budgets, and there’s been some bipartisan interest in property tax relief and addressing medical debt. Whitmer has also urged the Legislature to work with her on steps to improve low student literacy scores and create a new affordable housing tax credit.
“As of right now, the electoral reasons to get things passed are very few,” said Corwin Smidt, interim director at Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Research. “… You’re going to see a lot of legislation as campaigning through legislative proposals — not legislation as policy.”
Rosie Jones, spokesperson for Democratic Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, said in a statement that there were no plans to change chamber rules in the event of a Republican victory on Tuesday.
The Board of State Canvassers will likely certify Tuesday’s election results during a May 28 meeting, and Jones said the Senate would “quickly” swear in the winner after that.
Tunney v. Greene
Tunney and Greene were among nearly a dozen candidates to run for the open 35th Senate District. Greene emerged from the Feb. 3 Democratic primary with 60% of the vote, while Tunney secured 51% of the Republican vote in his special primary race.
Recent campaign finance reports indicate Greene has raised $404,302 since the start of the race and had roughly $55,809 still in the bank heading into the election. Tunney has raised a total of $398,616 and had $42,503 left in his war chest ahead of Tuesday.
Tunney is an attorney and partner at Tunney Law, PLLC. He previously served as general counsel and executive vice president of his family’s manufacturing business, Duro-Last, Inc.
In a Tuesday interview with Bridge Michigan, he described himself as “a Saginaw guy” who decided to run for the seat after seeing how long it took Whitmer to call the special election.
“I think taxation without representation is wrong,” said Tunney, who added his first bill, if elected, would be to require a governor call special elections within 30 days of a vacancy. “I think that manipulating the system for partisan politics is wrong, and we should not be denying our taxpayers and our citizens a voice.”
Education issues, particularly Michigan’s poor grade-school reading scores and issues with chronic absenteeism, have been a core part of Tunney’s focus on the campaign trail.
He’s also pledged to make Michigan more “business-friendly” by rolling back state regulations, lowering Michigan’s 4.25% state income tax rate and supporting public safety initiatives.
Greene, meanwhile, is a longtime captain with the Saginaw Fire Department — wearing his uniform in a campaign video prompted a successful complaint. He worked in the Legislature for McDonald Rivet, who joined Whitmer in endorsing him for the Senate race.
Greene also served for 30 years in the United States Marine Corps Reserve where he deployed to more than a dozen nations – including Iraq in the early 2000s as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom – before retiring in April 2024.
“I always work to maintain a good presence in the community … because if young people see people doing well, that leads them to do well,” Greene told Bridge on Wednesday.
Similar to Tunney, Greene also identified public safety as a priority for his campaign and said he’d like to make Michigan more attractive to small businesses by rolling back potentially burdensome state regulations.
Among other things, Greene has said he would try to protect voting rights, expand the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit for lower-income workers and establish a new tax credit to help working parents afford child care.
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