By Katherine Dailey, Michigan Advance
Democrat Chedrick Greene, a Saginaw fire captain and former U.S. Marine, was elected to the Michigan Senate on Tuesday night with 60% of the vote, defeating Republican Jason Tunney in a crucial special election that keeps Democrats in control of the chamber through the end of 2026.
“This is a win for affordability, for people who do everything right but still struggle because their wages aren’t keeping up with the solar prices,” Greene said in his victory speech. “We’ll have a working class guy who has walked in their shoes fighting for them in Lansing. This is a win for safety, people who want to feel safe in their schools, in their neighborhoods. We’ll have a career public safety professional making decisions on policy aimed at stopping violence, drugs, theft and more.”
The high-stakes election was called by the Associated Press at 11:01 p.m., with around 55% of votes reported. Green led all three counties in the district as of 11:09 p.m. — 71% in Saginaw County, 58% in Bay County and 50% in Midland County.
Democrats had previously held a 19-18 majority in the state Senate, but a Republican win would have essentially allowed the GOP caucus to stall out any legislation that they did not want to see pass through the chamber. With Greene’s victory, however, Democrats remain in control of the chamber through the end of the calendar year, including the passage of the Fiscal Year 2027 budget.
Tunney conceded just after 10:15 p.m., thanking supporters in a statement and said he was looking forward to the November election to try and win the seat.
“This is only the halfway point. As we head into November, the contrast between Chedrick and myself will only become clearer to more and more voters,” Tunney, a Saginaw-based attorney, said. “I’m excited about what lies ahead, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Both Tunney and Greene have filed to run again for a full term in the seat in November, with Tunney facing a familiar primary challenger in financial firm owner and former truck driver Chadwick Twillman, who also sought the Republican nomination in this special election. Greene is unopposed in the August Democratic primary.
Libertarian Ali Sledz, a self-described mom and Army spouse, received about 2% of the vote for the seat, which has been vacant since January 2025, when Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet of Bay City took her position in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Chedrick told supporters of Tunney and Sledz, “You have my commitment that my team and I will work as hard and smart for you and our entire district as anyone else.”
The mood was high at Greene’s watch party throughout the night, even before results were called.
“This room is packed full of people who worked really hard to get Chedrick across the finish line, because they know that he will represent mid-Michigan in the state Senate,” McDonald Rivet said prior to results being announced. “He is a retired Marine. He’s a firefighter. He spent his entire life serving our community, and looks like it’s going to be a pretty good night for him.”
She added that Greene “won outright some of the most Republican areas in this district.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was heavily criticized for her delay in calling the special election, which left residents of the 35th Senate District without representation in the chamber for 16 months. While Michigan law requires the governor to call a special election to fill an empty state legislative seat, it does not provide any statutory time frame in which the election must be called.
Regardless, Whitmer said the victory “put a check on Republican policies which have led to skyrocketing gas prices and higher costs of groceries, housing, and health care,” adding that she looked “forward to working with Senator-elect Greene and the entire legislature to keep cutting taxes, fixing the damn roads, feeding our kids free breakfast and lunch, and protecting Michiganders from the economic uncertainty coming from Washington D.C.”
That sentiment was echoed by Greene’s new Democratic associates in the Michigan Senate.
“This special election is about retaining our Democratic majority, which our colleagues have been all in on,” state Sen. Darrin Camilleri (D-Trenton) said at Greene’s election night party. “We’ve been focused on retaining the seat so that we can get back to full strength, so we can deliver a budget for Michigan residents.”
The district encompasses portions of Saginaw, Bay and Midland counties, including the cities of Saginaw, Bay City and Midland. McDonald Rivet was the first Democrat to hold the seat in its history, though it covered a different portion of the state prior to the 2022 redistricting cycle. She won her election in 2022 with 53% of the vote. The district had much closer margins in the 2024 presidential race — the AP noted that Kamala Harris barely edged out a win over President Donald Trump in the district in 2024, 49.7% to 48.9%, on the strength of her 17-percentage-point lead in the Saginaw portion of the district.
After casting their ballots in Saginaw, Annie and Chris Packard said that the economy — specifically gas and food prices, as well as Social Security, was their top issue in the election. Jasper Gallagher, a statistics and computer science graduate student, said that the job market and living expenses were his primary focus.
A number of voters in Saginaw also mentioned a bond proposal to remodel and refurbish school buildings as an important part of their decision to vote.
“In this room, you can feel the vibe that people are just excited about the process,” Chris Swanson, Genesee County sheriff and Democratic gubernatorial candidate said at Greene’s watch party prior to results being announced. “People know it can go a couple different ways, but the process is still respected. People still love the elections of our country.”
This also continues a trend of Democrats exceeding expectations and outperforming Republicans in a number of off-year and special elections since Trump took office at the start of 2025, with a POLITICO analysis showing that nearly every election since then has shifted towards the Democrats.
But this race is also being viewed by leaders and pundits on both sides as a bellwether for the November 2026 midterms, both in Michigan and nationally, as Democrats across the country will seek to take back control of one or both chambers of Congress, while Michigan Democrats will seek to reclaim the state House, while maintaining control of the governor’s office and the state Senate.
Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which serves as the campaign arm of the Democratic Party for state legislatures, applauded Greene’s “decisive victory in one of the highest-stakes battleground districts in the country.”
“His victory defends the Democratic majority in the Michigan Senate and builds undeniable Democratic momentum for November, which is an all-hands-on-deck moment for building state legislative power all across the country,” she said. “The DLCC is clear-eyed about the stakes of 2026 elections in the wake of the Callais ruling and is building an unprecedented operation to meet this moment. Our strategy to remake the landscape of state legislative power doesn’t end with special elections – we’re just getting started.”
The DLCC had previously named the election as the most competitive special election in the country in 2026 in February, making Greene one of their promoted candidates for national fundraising movements.
Cory Smidt, interim director at Michigan State University’s Institute of Public Policy and Social Research, told the Associated Press that the district “looks like the state as a whole.” Though he cautioned against viewing the outcome as a clear signal for the midterms, he said turnout and voting patterns among different groups could offer valuable insights.
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.
