Schwarzenegger Mulled Leaving GOP

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and several advisers a few months ago discussed whether he should follow the move of his friend Michael Bloomberg, the New York City mayor who left the Republican Party to become an independent.

But in the end, Schwarzenegger and crew decided that Californians already saw him as independent of the GOP, and there would be no point in a switch, according to Schwarzenegger biographer Joe Mathews, author of “The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy.â€