Experimental studies have shown that electing a leader based on measurements of the underlying communication network can be beneficial. We use this approach to study the problem of electing a leader that is eventually not only correct (as aptured by the failure detector abstraction), but also optimal with respect to the transmission delays to its peers. We give the definitions of this problem and a suitable model, thus allowing us to make an analytical analysis of the problem, which is in contrast to previous work on that topic.