father, Leone was among the founders of the Christian Democracy (DC), the PPI's heir led by Alcide De Gasperi. After two years, in 1945, he was elected DC's provincial secretary for Naples, immediately becoming one of the leading figures of the party. In 1946, Leone was among the main supporters of the "neutrality" in the 1946 institutional referendum, in which Italians voted to abolish the monarchy of the House of Savoy. In the same year, he was elected with nearly 32,000 votes to the Constituent Assembly for the constituency of Naples–Caserta. As a prominent jurist, he was appointed in the commission with the aim of drawing up the new republican constitution. In April 1948, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies with 60,000 votes. Even as a deputy, he continued working as a lawyer and teaching at the university, considering for a long time these occupations as priority aspects of his life. Also for this reason, according to some testimonies, he often expressed the desire not to take on government positions. Being able to count on his own reliable and territorially rooted electorate, Leone practically never conducted a real party activity. He remained substantially foreign to the large and small factions in which the DC quickly split up, although he could be considered close to the party's conservative wing. President of the Chamber of Deputies Thanks to his super partes position, the respect of all DC's internal factions, alongside the undoubted consideration gained also from the other political forces during the works of the Constituent Assembly, in 1950, Leone assumed the position of Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies and then, from May 1955, the one of President, which he held continuously until June 1963. As president, he demonstrated, in addition to a strong sense of the institutions and a scrupulous respect for the rules of democratic confrontation, a remarkable ability to govern parliamentary dynamics, also mastered through that undeniable presence of spirit, contributed in making him a well-known figure in the public opinion. At the same time, he was able to gain approval for his action both within the party, which found him a reliable manager of parliamentary processes, and outside DC, among the majority's parties but also in the oppositions, which appreciated his qualities of institutional balance. Prime Minister of Italy First term In the 1963 general election, the Christian Democrats lost almost one million votes,