You could go the old fashioned route and remove the igniter start manually.Throw a handful of pellets in the bottom of the firepot. Start them on fire manually. Once the fire gets raging, turn on the smoker. If you do it before, it may blow out your small fire. I know from experience.Downside is you have to pull out everything in the grill to startup your grill every time. Upside is that you get to vacuum it before you start up and maybe not have any issues once you get the fire and the controller blowing air.
Any chance of replacing the ignitor with a ceramic version?