Michael DiSalle

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Michael Vincent DiSalle (January 6, 1908 - September 14, 1981) was a Democratic politician from Ohio. He served as the 60th Governor of Ohio.

In 1946, DiSalle ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives but lost to incumbent Republican Homer A. Ramey. DiSalle served as mayor of Toledo, Ohio from 1948 - 1950. Elected in 1958, DiSalle served as Governor of Ohio from 1959 - 1963. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1960. He also lost reelection as Governor in 1962 where his stance on capital punishment, a tax hike, and a policy of the state billing children for reimbursement of necessaries whose parents were wards of the state was at loggerheads with the voters.

DiSalle was not necessarily against the death penalty for murder, but had advocated that poorer defendants did not have the access to counsel that defendants with money had resulting in less prepared, potentially ineffective counsel. He is quoted in the book Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution by Austin Sarat as saying "No one who has never watched the hands of a clock marking the last minutes of a condemned man's existence, knowing that he alone has the temporary Godlike power to stop the clock, can realize the agony of deciding an appeal for executive clemency." He is also the author of "Second Choice" a history of the Vice Presidency.

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Preceded by: C. William O'Neill	Governor of Ohio 1959–1963	Succeeded by: Jim Rhodes
Preceded by: Lloyd Emerson Roulet	Mayor of Toledo 1948–1950	Succeeded by: Ollie Czelusta