Which is a sort of self-flattering thing to say. In the meantime, Buttigieg—who responded to the Los Angeles mayor in Iowa by saying, “I’m happy to be known as the younger, gayer version of Eric Garcetti anytime”—was preparing to walk out onstage at the December presidential debate, while Garcetti was failing to be recognized by patrons at the juice bar. “Garcetti must be kicking himself” is something I’ve heard a lot of Democratic observers say to one another, about what he must be thinking in response to seeing the considerably younger mayor of a considerably smaller town sitting comfortably in the top tier of presidential candidates. If Cory Booker has been having a hard time distinguishing himself in the presidential race as “the other Rhodes Scholar mayor,” Garcetti—who first met Booker in 1993, when the future New Jersey senator welcomed him to their dorm at Oxford—has become the other other Rhodes Scholar mayor, the one who didn’t run for president.

Read: How to run for president while you’re running a city

While Buttigieg struggles to convince people that he can cobble together a real coalition to make it past Iowa, and Booker struggles to qualify for the next debate, Garcetti is hoping for a consolation prize: the opportunity to be a key Democratic power broker in 2020. With Kamala Harris, his home-state junior senator, is out of the race, he was freed to endorse whomever he pleased, and yesterday announced he was endorsing Joe Biden. (“Democrats are blessed to have such an extraordinary field of candidates,” Garcetti said in a statement, “but I will never forget what Joe Biden has done for my city and our nation.) Beyond that, he’s been putting out feelers to Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez in hopes of positioning himself as a player in an expected platform fight at the Democratic convention in July. A committed group of California Democrats mock him and see this as the latest example of him being too convinced of his own cleverness and potential, but he’s serious about seeing himself as having enough stature to be important.

“There’s really only two scenarios for the convention: Nobody has a majority or it’s a really close finish and you have a lot of people that need to be brought on board,” Garcetti told me. “And not resolving either of those risks losing this whole thing. And that would be a very Democratic thing to do.”

Garcetti is ambitious. Before Buttigieg came along, he might have been considered precocious. The son of a Los Angeles district attorney who became nationally known for prosecuting O. J. Simpson, Garcetti was a city councilor at age 30, mayor at 42, and a player in national Democratic politics by age 44. In 2015, he hosted a dinner at his house for Joe Biden when the vice president was contemplating a presidential run, and the following year he was on the long list of potential running mates for Hillary Clinton. By the time Donald Trump reached the White House, Garcetti had his eyes on his own presidential run. When I talked to him in New Hampshire in August 2017, he claimed that he was just taking a break from a vacation in the Berkshires—but most people wouldn’t break off their vacation to campaign on behalf of the Democratic candidate running for mayor of Manchester, taking time to introduce themselves to the young Democrats there, unless they had their eyes on New Hampshire for other reasons.