Fernando Ferrer’s pummeling in last month’s mayoral race will make any aspirations of running for citywide office again nearly impossible, some political observers said.

While Mr. Ferrer has not yet publicly discussed what he’ll do now that the campaign is over, in one television interview after the election he said he would not run for public office again.

If he did change his mind, some said Mr. Ferrer’s 20-point loss to Mr. Bloomberg, his third unsuccessful bid for the reins of City Hall, would probably make it too difficult to get the Democratic Party behind him again and noted that raising money would be even more arduous than it was in the latest campaign.

“I would think elected office is out,” a professor of public affairs at Baruch College, Douglas Muzzio, said. “There aren’t too many Lazaruses out there. Alan Hevesi was a Lazarus. Mark Green wants to be a Lazarus. People lose races, but this is the third time.”

Mr. Muzzio and others predicted that the former president of the Bronx would return to the nonprofit world and could end up as an Cabinet appointee if the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, wins the gubernatorial race next year.

“I would think that the most likely outcome would be Spitzer,” Mr. Muzzio said. “Don’t forget Spitzer was one of Freddy’s early and strong endorsers, plus they share political consultants, and they’ve got a good relationship.”

When asked whether Mr. Ferrer had started assessing his options, the executive director of the Ferrer campaign, Kalman Yeger, said: “He’s relaxing, spending time with his family, and playing with his grandchildren.”

Mr. Yeger said Mr. Ferrer was not available to be interviewed.

None of those who talked to The New York Sun purported to have knowledge of Mr. Ferrer’s plans, saying the former candidate probably didn’t know what he would do this soon after the election. They all mentioned the private, nonprofit sector as an option and predicted that Mr. Ferrer would work on public policy in some capacity.

The chairman of the state Conservative Party, Michael Long, said Mr. Ferrer would have to do a stint in the private sector.

“His support within the party was very weak and that, I think, stifles the chances of him seeking public office in the very near future,” said Mr. Long, who endorsed the former Republican minority leader in the City Council, Thomas Ognibene, in the mayoral race.

“As a candidate, I’ve been there after it’s all over,” Mr. Long said. “You can blame your handlers, you can blame the people who work for you, you can blame the press, or you can blame the lack of money; but the bottom line is that the buck stops and ends with the candidate.”

After losing in the 2001 mayoral primary, Mr. Ferrer took over the Drum Major Institute, a Manhattan based think tank that focuses on “progressive” public policy.

That was, however, his first time out of public office in about two decades. He served as a member of the City Council in the 1980s and served as president of the Bronx before being termed out of office in 2001.

The president of the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, Angelo Falcon, who has been a critic of Mr. Ferrer in the past, said that despite the “muddled” campaign message, the Democrat had “a lot of possibilities.”

“He’s not the mayor, but I think he came out of this very well, considering the margin of the loss,” he said.

Mr. Falcon said running for “office at this level” might be “problematic,” but that running for a congressional seat in the Bronx “might be doable.”

In an interview last week with the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario, Mr. Ferrer faulted the press and pollsters for his loss and did not acknowledge any mistakes by his own campaign.

Later in the week, one of Mr. Ferrer’s top political advisers, Roberto Ramirez, said high-profile national Democrats who did not support Mr. Ferrer had abandoned an important cause.

One of Mr. Ferrer’s early supporters, State Senator Eric Schneiderman, said Mr. Ferrer “could go off into the private sector and make a lot of money,” but that “his passion on the issues is still there and I think he’s going to be part of this debate.”

As for Mr. Ferrer’s next move, Mr. Schneiderman said: “He’ll get to that. He was involved in a tough campaign for a long time, and I think he’s entitled to some time for reflection.”