[3] DiSalle was elected as mayor of Toledo in 1947 and re-elected in 1949, and served from 1948 until his resignation on November 30, 1950, to accept a federal appointment.

[7] In December 1952, President Truman (now a lame duck) appointed DiSalle as director of the Economic Stabilization Agency, replacing Roger Putnam.

In July 1959, DiSalle signed a bill designating "with God, all things are possible" as the official motto of the State of Ohio.

[11] Of the total popular vote in the primaries, DiSalle placed sixth behind eventual nominee Sen. John F. Kennedy, as well as Gov.

[14] In 1962, DiSalle lost re-election as governor to then-state auditor Jim Rhodes,[15] after voters disapproved of several aspects of his administration, including his opposition to capital punishment, a tax increase, and a policy which billed wards of state for living necessities.

DiSalle stated that despite being "totally opposed to the death penalty", he could not use his power of executive clemency without mitigating circumstances or evidence of miscarriage of justice.

To do so would be to personally repeal the law providing for capital punishment in Ohio, and he might have been impeached for violating his oath of office, DiSalle wrote.

[18] "To demonstrate his faith in rehabilitation, [DiSalle] made it a point to hire convicted murderers to serve on his household staff" at the Ohio Governor's Mansion.

He cited the case as an example of how the justice system had failed to study the behavior of a minor criminal to prevent him from committing murder.

[18] After leaving the governorship, DiSalle co-founded and served as a chairman of the National Committee to Abolish Federal Death Penalty.

[21][22] His 1965 book, The Power of Life or Death, discusses this issue and chronicles his difficult experiences as the man charged with making the final decision regarding a sentence commutation.

[23] He is quoted in the book Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution 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".