Schwarzenegger will appear on ‘Tonight Show’

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will appear on NBC’s “Tonight Show” Friday, a year after announcing his candidacy to Jay Leno.

The governor’s return to Leno’s couch isn’t exactly a surprise. In fact, he’s been on the show twice since August 2003 — once after winning the governorship in the recall election that ousted then-Gov. Gray Davis, and once in March.

Whether he’ll use Friday’s appearance as a platform for some new campaign — he has made rumblings about backing a voter initiative to make the state Legislature part time — remains to be seen.

Whatever Schwarzenegger has to say, it likely won’t be as big a surprise as his announcement a year ago. At the time, most observers expected him to tell Leno and the TV audience that he wasn’t going to run in the recall election, instead deferring to former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan.

That, of course, turned out not to be the case, and the rest is, as they say, history.