When do competing candidates campaign on the same issues rather than play to their reputational strengths on issues they own? This article develops a theory of conditional convergence, in which a race’s competitiveness and the salience of an issue combine to alter whether candidates campaign on issues that they do not own. To test this theory, I focus on advertising in three election cycles for the U.S. House and Senate and use new methods to measure issue salience at the district and state levels. The analyses indicate that the previous null findings in studies of ownership and convergence result from a failure to account for ownership’s dynamic interaction with salience and competitiveness.