By Nick Smith
Staff Writer
Posted: September 21, 2018 3:12 PM

As the general election approaches one thought has to be in the back of the minds of Democrats, confident in their chances of making significant gains in the state Senate, with some even daring to dream of their first majority since 1984: could third-party candidates burn them again?

It's happened before.

The closest the Democrats have come to flipping the chamber was 2006, a wave election for the party where control of the House flipped and then-Governor Jennifer Granholm won re-election in a landslide. Democrats, meanwhile, sat at a 22-16 minority and needed three pickups to secure a 19-19 tie in the Senate, allowing them the tie-breaking vote via the lieutenant governor.

Democrats only took a single seat. Why? Green Party candidates played spoiler in the other two key races, that's why.

In the 13th Senate District in Oakland County, Republican former Rep. John Pappageorge beat Democrat Andy Levin by 776 votes. The Green Party candidate Kyle McBee took 3,118 votes, likely the difference.

The same was true in the 32nd Senate District, then consisting of Saginaw and Gratiot counties, where Republican Rep. Roger Kahn defeated Democratic Rep. Carl Williams by 520 votes. Again, it was a Green Party candidate, Lloyd Clarke, who was the likely difference by earning 2,326 votes.

The Republicans came away in 2006 holding the chamber with a 21-17 majority, with that majority growing in the years since to the 27-10 majority it now holds, with one vacancy in a heavily Democratic Detroit-area seat that will be filled by a Democrat in November.

With a look at the Senate map for this November, where Democrats have multiple key opportunities for picking up seats and others that are edging into play, an unsettling pattern for Democrats, or perhaps Republicans, emerges.

Nearly every competitive seat on the table for the Democrats has at least one third party candidate running that could siphon away votes.

In the 29th Senate District race featuring Rep. Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) and Rep. Chris Afendoulis (R-Grand Rapids Township), the Libertarian Party is running Robert Vannoller of Lowell and Louis Palus is running for the Working Class Party.

Up the in 38th Senate District where Rep. Scott Dianda (D-Calumet) and Republican former Rep. Ed McBroom of Vulcan are slugging it out, the Green Party has Wade Roberts of Wetmore in the mix.

The Libertarian Party has Mike Saliba of Clinton Township running in the 10th Senate District, a hotly contested race between Rep. Henry Yanez (D-Sterling Heights) and Republican Michael MacDonald of Macomb Township.

See the pattern? It continues further down the list of prime Democratic targets they will need to win to flip the chamber.

For the Libertarian Party, they recruited Joseph LeBlanc of Plymouth for the 7th Senate District, Jeff Pittel of Sylvan Lake in the 12th Senate District, Chad McNamara in the 17th Senate District, Katie Nepton of Dimondale in the 24th Senate District and Max Riekse of Fruitport in the 34th Senate District.

Not all third party candidates will hurt Democrats, however. Mr. Riekse is a conservative who has run as a Republican in the past, for example. Libertarians can hurt Republicans more than Democrats depending on the type of Libertarian candidate. And some good news for Democrats is far fewer Green Party candidates this time.

Sharp observers will note to this point I have left out the 20th Senate District, where Sen. Margaret O'Brien (R-Portage) is facing former Democratic Rep. Sean McCann of Kalamazoo, where Ms. O'Brien defeated Mr. McCann by 61 votes in 2014. A race Democrats would love to have back.

In 2014 the Libertarian Party ran Lorence Wenke of Galesburg, who earned 7,171 votes and was the difference in the race, though there was some evidence he hurt Mr. McCann too by pulling votes in Kalamazoo.

Mr. Wenke is running again on the Libertarian Party slate, although in the August primary (where Mr. McCann took more than 9,000 votes more than Ms. O'Brien) he only received 202 votes.