William Q. MacLean Jr., an American politician and longtime South Coast Massachusetts power broker known as “Mr. December” for end-of-session dealmaking, died February 21, 2026. He was 91. His cause of death was undisclosed. A Democrat, MacLean spent 32 years in the Massachusetts Legislature and became one of the region’s most influential Statehouse figures.
MacLean served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1961 to 1981 and in the Massachusetts Senate from 1981 to 1993. He rose to House Majority Leader in 1975 and held the post until resigning from leadership in 1978. Even after leaving House leadership, he remained a key legislative operator for Greater New Bedford and surrounding communities through his final years in office.
Much of MacLean’s legacy is linked to building and sustaining civic and education institutions on the South Coast. Biographical accounts credit him with playing a prominent role in the expansion of Southeastern Massachusetts Technical Institute into Southeastern Massachusetts University, later UMass Dartmouth. After leaving office, he also worked to help secure Statehouse approval for the 2010 merger of UMass Dartmouth and the Southern New England School of Law, a step tied to today’s UMass School of Law.
His record also included controversy. In 1993, MacLean pleaded guilty to two conflict-of-interest charges, paid a fine of more than $500,000, and surrendered his state pension. In Fairhaven, he was later recognized for earlier achievements when he was inducted into the Fairhaven High School Hall of Fame (Athlete category) in 2017, with records noting 14 varsity letters and a varsity football letter earned as an eighth-grader. His most lasting footprint remains the institutional growth of UMass Dartmouth and UMass Law in Southeastern Massachusetts.