In politics, you’re either on-message or you’re losing. Let’s get to it.
Welcome to On Message, a weekly look at where the battle lines are drawn and who is winning the war of words.
This week… Testing One Two.
The General Legislative Session began this week with one topic dominating the opening day: COVID.
On day one, the Senate passed a resolution to overturn the mask mandate in Salt Lake County and there are other actions being considered, as well.
And it all came on a day when nearly 40-thousand cases were reported from over the weekend. And that’s AFTER people have been told to just assume they have omicron if they have symptoms, so that number is likely only a fraction of actual cases.
You’d think that would be enough news for one topic for one day.
But policy aside, the media was also VERY interested in the health status of Senate President Stuart Adams.
The Senate spokeswoman announced last week that President Adams had tested positive for COVID but that he was feeling better and expected to be ready to open the session on the 18th.
Easy enough. Making that announcement, in theory, makes things simpler as getting Omicron and recovering essentially makes it pointless to test again during the session.
But I don’t think “simple” was how you would describe the messaging on Tuesday.
Go back to the previous week and build the timeline:
Adams began to feel symptoms on Wednesday the 12th; he was tested on Thursday the 13th; and made the announcement on Friday the 14th. (A great example of a Friday news dump, by the way. And those are particularly effective on the Friday heading into a holiday weekend.)
By CDC guidelines, he should be good to go on Tuesday while wearing a mask.
But Tuesday was anything but simple and the message got murky very quickly.
First, according to reports, President Adams took two tests on Tuesday, the first came back positive and the second negative. So Adams went to the floor to open the session. In his opening remarks he said he had tested positive twice – only to correct himself and clarify he had tested negative twice. This was all further complicated when the second test showed a faint line that would indicate a positive test.
It all led to stories with pearl-clutching headlines and photos of a maskless Senate President shaking hands with Elder Garret W. Gong after the latter had offered the session invocation.
Probably not the way they had hoped the opening day would go.
Ultimately, the Senate issued a statement emphasizing that President Adams had followed CDC guidelines by isolating for five days and could return to work and pointing out that test results could still return positive for recent cases.
My Monday Morning Quarterback view on this?
Establish the assumption that everyone on the floor is showing no symptoms or has tested negative. Don’t release any test results unless someone tests positive and will be performing legislative duties remotely. And don’t let this become the gossip story that dominates the headlines for six weeks.
On the other hand, if you want to distract from other COVID-related stories this week, it may have been an interesting way to draw attention to a story that won’t amount to much while other things are getting done. Sometimes allowing the chaos of a story that makes little impact has its advantages.
That’s it for this week.
More On Message in the next issue of the Utah Political Underground.
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