Twist my arm

The last thing Mike Duffy wanted to be was a Conservative senator.

At first he said he wasn’t interested in the Senate, he said. But he had watched a round of layoffs take place at CTV, he said, and knew more were on the way. "I thought, do I want to be around the office when it happens again?" Duffy said.

He reconsidered, and said he’d accept if he was offered a seat, he said.

He also said he wanted to sit as an independent, because he wasn’t a Conservative. "I was always a journalist," Duffy said. But Conservative senators were in the minority, he said, and Prime Minister Harper told him he needed him to sit as one. "And I thought, well, OK," Duffy said.