Walker Class - Check if menu item has description and if so add class to li

Question

I am using a pretty common walker class to pull in the description when I call the wp_nav_menu function. I am using this to add an optional second line for the menu, using the description. This of course makes the menu items uneven, if some have descriptions and some don't. I've come down to two possibilities:

1. Within the custom walker class, check to see if a menu item has a description and if so, add a unique class to the parent li on that menu item only.

2. Use css to vertically center the anchor text within the li if it has the span (description) or not

Anyone know of either solution, or another one?

Walker Class being used:

class description_walker extends Walker_Nav_Menu {
function start_el(&$output, $item, $depth, $args) {
    global $wp_query;
    $indent = ( $depth ) ? str_repeat( "\t", $depth ) : '';

    $class_names = $value = '';

    $classes = empty( $item->classes ) ? array() : (array) $item->classes;

    $class_names = join( ' ', apply_filters( 'nav_menu_css_class', array_filter( $classes ), $item ) );
    $class_names = ' class="' . esc_attr( $class_names ) . '"';

    $output .= $indent . '<li id="menu-item-'. $item->ID . '"' . $value . $class_names .'>';

    $attributes  = ! empty( $item->attr_title ) ? ' title="'  . esc_attr( $item->attr_title ) .'"' : '';
    $attributes .= ! empty( $item->target )     ? ' target="' . esc_attr( $item->target     ) .'"' : '';
    $attributes .= ! empty( $item->xfn )        ? ' rel="'    . esc_attr( $item->xfn        ) .'"' : '';
    $attributes .= ! empty( $item->url )        ? ' href="'   . esc_attr( $item->url        ) .'"' : '';

    $item_output = $args->before;
    $item_output .= '<a class="has-description"'. $attributes .'>';
    $item_output .= $args->link_before . apply_filters( 'the_title', $item->title, $item->ID ) . $args->link_after;
    $item_output .= '<span>' . $item->description . '</span>';
    $item_output .= '</a>';
    $item_output .= $args->after;

    $output .= apply_filters( 'walker_nav_menu_start_el', $item_output, $item, $depth, $args );
}
}