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… Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing.

(I think that’s the longest title we’ve had in 57 episodes.)

This week, former state representative, Becky Edwards, announced she had hit the 28,000 verified signature threshold and had secured her place on the primary ballot.

In doing so, Edwards joined fellow challenger Ally Isom, who qualified four days earlier and the incumbent, Senator Mike Lee, who also had sufficient signatures verified last week.

So, nearly three weeks before the Republican state convention the delegates are, essentially, going through the motions and collecting hats and T-shirts just for kicks.

While Lee is the heavy convention favorite, Edwards and Isom now have nothing to lose and, really, nothing to gain by spending a lovely spring Saturday inside a convention hall.

And I’ve been thinking about how that changes the communication strategy for each candidate.

For Isom and Edwards… probably not too much. I suppose if the convention were the site of the final showdown they would have to pull out all the stops to try and get to the right of Senator Lee – which would be an impossible task. Changing delegate perception of Lee in a single speech just isn’t going to happen.

But since they don’t have to out-MAGA anyone, they can use the convention (and the media coverage that comes with it) as a platform to show how their brand of Republican differs from Senator Lee and use the platform as a springboard for the nine-and-a-half week sprint to Primary Day.

The fact that all three candidates are on the primary ballot may change Senator Lee’s approach, as well. He is going to win at convention and he’s still a prohibitive favorite to secure the nomination. So, he needs to throw just enough red meat to fire up his base on April 23… but stop short of saying anything that will give the majority of Republican primary voters a reason to consider his opponents worth a good look.

Essentially, play error free baseball.

Lee heads into convention with a public endorsement from former President Donald Trump – and he really shouldn’t need anything more than that to win the day at the convention.

Stick to the conservative points that primary voters agree with without overly-pandering to the far right wing of the party and Lee can call it a successful afternoon.

That’s it for this week.

More On Message in the next issue of the Utah Political Underground.

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