The Jester's Exit

Squash-shaped Mike Di Salle waddled into a room filled with newsmen in Washington one day last week, and plopped his hulk into a chair. "Well, I'm gonna do it," he said. The Administration's anti-inflation boss had decided to go after the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator from Ohio. When a reporter asked what the issues will be, Di Salle was ready with one of his cracks: "I suppose the biggest one will be who will get the most votes."

Michael V. Di Salle resigned as mayor of Toledo in December 1950, to become head of the U.S. Office of Price Stabilization. It was a job that nobody seemed to want, and Washington skeptics thought that the fat, funny man--until then unknown outside of Ohio--would soon be scurrying for home. But he was well-equipped with a warming sense of humor, an impressive courage and a knowledge of practical politics. The rest of the country, he said, is "just an extension of Toledo."

He stepped up as the front man when the Administration sailed into dangerous political seas with the price freeze in January 1951. Then he put a price ceiling on raw cotton, and went to Capitol Hill to defy the congressional cotton bloc. Last fall, in the face of stampeding livestock men, he stuck to meat controls even when Harry Truman wanted to slaughter them. When members of Congress chuckled at his jokes, but shredded the price control law he wanted, Di Salle stuck to his job. Even his opponents agreed that he did about as well as could be expected with the tools he had. Harry Truman wanted him to stay, talked of a bigger job in the future. But Mike Di Salle, who has been running for one political office or another since he left college, wanted to get back on the ballot.

White-maned Republican Senator John Bricker, whose seat Di Salle will seek, and who will be a hard man to beat, had some words of welcome: "When I announced my candidacy, I said that I hoped I might have a real candidate who would raise the issues of the New Deal-Fair Deal-Fur Deal . . . Mr. Di Salle meets these requirements . . . There is no question in my mind where the votes will go when the issues are decided." Did Di Salle think corruption would be an issue? "I think it will be," mused Mike, "but I don't think anyone will take the affirmative side."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.