Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said "nah'' when offered a safe federal seat three years ago.
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Ms Gallagher said she told retiring ALP elder Bob McMullan in 2009 her then job as deputy chief minister, health minister and treasurer was more fun than the life of a Labor backbencher in the House of Representatives.
Following Ms Gallagher's refusal, ACT Labor tore itself apart in an ugly preselection brawl over the seats of Canberra and Fraser. The Molonglo MLA went on to take on the Chief Minister's job 17 months later and led her party to victory in the 2012 territory election.
Mr McMullan held the seat of Fraser from 1996 until his retirement in 2010.
Ms Gallagher told Fairfax Media on Friday that before he announced his retirement Mr McMullan told her and then chief minister Jon Stanhope he planned to step down.
"Bob summoned me to his office one day and just came out with, 'I'm going to retire, I want you to take my seat'," she said.
She did not know if then prime minister Kevin Rudd knew about the move.
"I think Bob said that he had spoken to other people in the party but he certainly didn't come out and say the prime minister had endorsed it or anything like that, but he said that he thought it was warmly supported or something like that.
"He asked me to think about, but just from memory, I just said 'nah'.
"Then I contacted him a week later and said no again and that was the end of that."
Ms Gallagher said that being a federal member seemed less interesting than being deputy chief minister.
"I had a lot to lose, potentially. I was deputy chief minister and I would have had to leave the Assembly. I just thought going to be a federal member as opposed to doing what I was doing, building hospitals and delivering budgets and stuff like that, it just didn't seem as interesting a job."
After she turned down the offer local party members rejected the two candidates for the ACT seats, seeing the pair as being imposed on them by factional heavyweights.
Alternative candidates Gai Brodtmann and Andrew Leigh came out on top in the seats of Canberra and Fraser respectively.
"I hadn't foreseen that being the issue that it was," Ms Gallagher said.
"The issue in the party would have been that Bob is from the centre, or the unaligned group, and here he was asking someone from the Left, and he basically said the centre would have pulled in behind me and maybe they would, so it could have been a different outcome."
