This paper concerns political parties' 'ownership' of public policy issues in Tanzania. In particular, it examines the claims that parties mount over public policy issues, and under what conditions they prevail over other parties' competing claims. The argument turns on the ubiquity of narrative in electoral discourse, and the importance of the media assemblage in accepting or resisting parties' messages. When parties' ownership of issues is couched in ongoing narratives, those parties leave themselves prone to a particular mode of counterattack, namely, that rival parties improvise new 'chapters', which they append to their opponent's original narrative. This rhetorical device bears the risk of accepting opponents' prior stipulations, but the advantage of disarming resistance to their message in the media assemblage. Alone, this discursive strategy is seldom effective. However, these new narratives gain credence in the media assemblage when they are also dramatically performed. This paper follows this argument through a study of the changing patterns of issue ownership in Tanzania since 1995. In doing so, it speaks to the discursive roots of Chadema's rising in popularity between 2005 and 2015, and President John Pombe Magufuli's success in stealing the initiative since then.