Country Stove - Winslow PI-40 start up issue

Strange problem this year. Fired up the stove about 5 days ago and it has been running fine. Took the burnpot out to clean(I know, a little early, just being thorough) and reinstalled. No ignition this morning. Checked alignment(always a problem with this stove), checked ignitor(hot after 25 minutes of cooldown), so I torn into it and lined up the ignitor with the burnpot. Fired up the stove and even though it eventually fired up the pellets in the burnpot, the pellets seemed to glow red for a long time. Usually once you get a little red in the pellets it fires up. Like it couldn't get over the temp point to ignite the pellets. Why are they pellets taking so long to ignite?

Poor pellets(they seem dry, I'm using newer Golden Fires...)
Poor air circulation(I may need to check the gasket, but it seems like there is plenty of air flow)
I cleaned the chimney out over the summer(no issues here, it's pretty dang clean)
New ignitor(it's red hot on the end, took 25 minutes to cool down enough for me to realign it)

Am I missing anything here?

Ash traps still have ash in them, the area above the burn pot still has ash in it, door gasket isn't sealing, and ash pan gaskets aren't sealing, one of the sections in your igniter is bad, not enough air flow past the igniter?

Any combination thereof.