In U.S. history, there have been few presidents who served as mayors and then went on to become elected to the nation's highest office. The almost-impeached Andrew Johnson was mayor of a small town in Greenville, Tenn., before becoming president. If you want to get technical, Calvin Coolidge served as mayor in Northampton, Mass., before ascending to the office of vice president in 1920, then president in 1923 after Warren G. Harding's death.
Now, though, it seems Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti might also attempt to make that leap.
The Los Angeles Times has been keeping a close eye on the L.A. Mayor's national tour, and the paper's assistant managing editor for politics, Christina Bellantoni, spoke to A Martinez about some of the evidence pointing to a possible 2020 run.
"Whenever anybody goes to places like New Hampshire and Iowa, which are the traditional early nominating states, they're testing the waters. Here's someone who has a fairly high profile as mayor of one of the nation's largest cities, someone who is fairly young and clearly ambitious."
[This post was corrected on December 22, 2017 at 10:50 a.m. A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that Grover Cleveland was mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., when he was elected U.S. president. He served as governor.]