#mayor garcetti

No, definitely not. In fact, only three Presidents have ever served as Mayor at any point in their political careers:

•Andrew Johnson served as Mayor of Greeneville, Tennessee from 1834-1838, but that was over 30 years prior to his election as Vice President and assumption of the Presidency following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Between his mayoral term and his Presidency, Johnson had spent nearly 10 years in both chambers of the Tennessee State Legislature, five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, two terms as Governor of Tennessee, nearly five years in the U.S. Senate (where he was the only Southern Senator who remained loyal to the Union), and three years as Military Governor of Tennessee at the request of President Lincoln until being asked to join Lincoln’s unity ticket in 1864.

•Grover Cleveland served as Mayor of Buffalo, New York for most of the calendar year of 1882. That was just three years prior to Cleveland’s inauguration for his first term as President in March 1885, but Cleveland served as Governor of New York immediately before his Presidential election. Cleveland became a national figure and a prospective contender for the Presidency due to his popularity and his substantial accomplishments in office despite serving just two years as Governor of New York, and that success was what propelled him to the White House so quickly.

•Calvin Coolidge served as Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts throughout 1910 and 1911 in between his service in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1907-1908) and Massachusetts State Senate (1912-1915). Earlier in his political career, Coolidge had also served in local government as City Solicitor during most of time as a member of the Northampton City Council (1898-1902) and spent a year as clerk of the courts in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, but actually lost a race for the Northampton school board in 1904 -- the only time in his entire life that Coolidge ever lost an election. But Coolidge also didn’t springboard into national prominence due to his success in local government elections. He had served as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and then Governor of Massachusetts before his nomination and election as Vice President in 1920 and his assumption of the Presidency upon President Harding’s death in August 1923.

It’s also worth noting that Theodore Roosevelt lost his campaign for Mayor of New York City in 1886. Roosevelt was just 31 years old and had spent the better part of the previous two years in the Dakota Territory while grieving the death of his first wife shortly after she gave birth to his first child. Despite his age, Roosevelt had made a name for himself in the New York State Assembly prior to his wife’s death, but decided not to seek re-election during the grief-stricken months that followed. Roosevelt’s made a better showing in the Mayoral election than had been expected, but he worried that his third-place finish in the race had snuffed out his meteoric rise in politics. By his 43rd birthday, however, Roosevelt had made an impact as a member of the Civil Service Commission, as New York City Police Commissioner, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, as a military leader and bona fide war hero in the Spanish-American War, as Governor of New York, as Vice President of the United States, and by becoming the youngest President in American history when President McKinley was assassinated.