Here's a little bit of information out of New York that will lend fuel to the talks of newly-elected City Comptroller John Liu eventually running for higher office. In the recent Nov. 3rd elected, Liu not only became the  first Asian American to hold the second highest office in the world’s foremost city, but he also out-polled Mayor Michael Bloomberg by about 150,000 votes.

Liu, 42, who also made history eight years ago when he became the first Asian American elected to the City Council, received 696,330 votes to the mayor’s total of 557,059. The Flushing lawmaker also trounced his opponent, Republican Joe Mendola, getting 77 percent of the vote to Mendola’s 24 percent.

In his victory speech following the election, Liu sounded optimistic and upbeat.

“We look forward to a smooth transition over the coming days and weeks, and we’ll hit the ground running with the best qualified professionals in financial management.

“We are grappling with the biggest budget crisis in decades, and so we have a lot of work ahead of us— and I’m looking forward to it, to restore fiscal responsibility to the City of New York.”

Liu, whose family emigrated from Taiwan when he was a child, went on to graduate from a major college and worked for one of the country’s major accounting firms before being elected to the city council.

Governor David Paterson, the state’s first black governor, saw Liu’s election as “kind of like a miniature version of Barack Obama last year”. He added that Liu’s “steadfast criticism, discipline about the city’s highlights and some of the difficulties we have to overcome, were heard by the voters”.

Okay, maybe comparing Liu to Obama is a bit of stretch, but we'll see. Of course, we would have to amend the Constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to run for the Presidency.