The long shadow of William ‘Biff’ MacLean

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To live anywhere on the South Coast of Massachusetts is to live in the shadow of William Q. “Biff” MacLean.

On Friday night, the 32-year titan of the state legislature, prolific philanthropist, and don of New Bedford politics passed away, at 91.

Perhaps the most skilled, most beloved, most reviled, most charming, and most complex politician to emerge from this oft-forgotten corner of the commonwealth, MacLean is the man who put New Bedford at the front of the line. His son-of-a-fisherman’s work ethic would pry untold millions out of Statehouse coffers on behalf of New Bedford families. His ruthless politicking would make a once-backwater campaign stop into the central crossroads of Massachusetts politics. And his warm handshake and scorching hot telephone line extended an eager hand and ear to generations of his blue-collar constituents.

Though his official tenure in politics ended in 1993, when MacLean pleaded guilty to two conflict-of-interest charges and was forced to surrender his state pension and pay more than a $500,000 fine, his influence in both Boston and New Bedford was unyielding.

“Even though he was ‘retired,’ Biff had significant influence in persuading the Statehouse to approve the merger of UMass Dartmouth and the Southern New England School of Law” in 2010, said John K. Bullard, the former mayor of New Bedford and trustee of the then-independent law school. Bullard said that a coterie of officials from the university, the law school, and nearby local governments all “leaned more on Biff than any elected representative” — almost 20 years after he had “retired.”

MacLean’s personal influence and legislative wrangling helped to create or sustain such a long list of South Coast institutions that it might be hard to imagine the region without his touch: the only public law school in Massachusetts; the original SMAST marine science building in New Bedford; the former Star Store arts campus; even UMass Dartmouth itself, when the school became the newest branch of a reimagined statewide system; the Zeiterion; Nativity Prep School; the Ernestina-Morrissey; Bristol Community College; St. Luke’s Hospital. Each of these pillars of the South Coast, plus churches, charities, and an untold quantity of never-publicized gifts and favors to friends and local businesses — all have depended on Biff MacLean.

“Biff was a master of the legislative process,” said state Sen. Mark Montigny, who succeeded MacLean in the upper house of one of the nation’s oldest legislatures. But Montigny mostly recalls the supreme challenge of picking up “the most effective constituent service operations in the state” as a 30-year-old freshman senator. “It was a tall task to step into, but my staff and I were determined from day one to serve with the same tenacity and common touch.”

“Biff never forgot his district because the people we serve are our neighbors and friends,” Montigny continued. “His legacy in our region has outlived him.”

Before serving in the Senate, MacLean joined the legislature’s lower house, the House of Representatives, in 1961 and served 20 years there, including as its majority leader. The man who now occupies his 10th Bristol seat — like just about everyone else — has a personal story that intertwines with Biff.

Mark Sylvia interned for the then-Senator MacLean when he was in high school, he told The Light. “Though I was just a kid from his district, he treated me like a VIP — even taking time to introduce me to Governor Dukakis, a moment I still cherish,” Sylvia said.

Sylvia said MacLean continued to reach out to him with encouragement and support as his career progressed from class president at Fairhaven High, to serving on the Fairhaven School Committee, to occupying Biff’s old House seat.

But somehow, the connection felt deeper. “I knew his mother, Charlotte, who was my elementary school librarian. By middle school, I would bring lilacs to ‘Nana’ MacLean and we would talk about local politics. She treated me as an equal, despite my age. Biff inherited that same generosity of spirit — and today, I try to pay that forward,” Sylvia said.

But not everyone’s memory of MacLean is so rosy.

Better to be feared than loved, if not both

“He’s got a black book that goes back to his first days in politics,” an unnamed state official warned about MacLean during a 2005 interview with The Standard-Times. 

That official “insisted on anonymity” to speak about the long-retired but baleful legislator. Another “prominent local lawmaker” was quoted: “Biff is the kind of person that knows a lot of people,” and also requested anonymity to say so.

Through decades of political maneuvering, MacLean won a reputation for operating his own favors-based economy. He was not shy about “recommending” people for government positions. Nor did he hesitate to call upon them to get something done. 

And his retribution could be total.

The man who prosecuted MacLean, former Attorney General L. Scott Harshbarger, came to rue his tangle with MacLean. “Part of me says I’d have been better off to have done nothing, to have done what everybody else [had] done with this case — nothing,” he told The Boston Globe. 

The Democratic Harshbarger lost the 1998 gubernatorial election to Republican Paul Cellucci. In that race, MacLean supported Cellucci, and in so doing helped to flip Bristol County — then still a rock-solid blue district — which may have helped deliver the Republican’s narrow victory.

Harshbarger’s political mentor, Frank Bellotti, also had his gubernatorial dreams dashed when MacLean threw his support to John Silber in the 1990 Democratic primary. To MacLean, the story of his prosecution was one of political retribution from these disgruntled men. “I think Frank Bellotti put him up to it,” MacLean told The Standard-Times.

And because all politics was personal to MacLean, he went after his enemies with the same zest that he fought for his friends.

In 1996, the “retired” MacLean entered the fray against a proposal for a casino, feeling jilted by former colleagues who, MacLean thought, wanted to upstage or replace the state lottery — which he had helped to pass decades earlier. “I shouldn’t be commenting on this to be very truthful, because everybody thinks I don’t like [state Treasurer] Joe Malone,” MacLean said in a newspaper interview. “Honest to God, to be known, I think he’s a jerk. Period. I really do.”

And in a not-so-tacit threat, the don of the South Coast made the table stakes for crossing him clear: “Malone is saying [a casino] won’t have an effect [on the lottery] — I think that’s political — that’s purely political because he’s looking beyond this. He’s looking to be a candidate for governor and… Bristol County is very key in any governor’s race.”

But a career in politics cannot become as enduring and iconic as MacLean’s with only newspaper theatrics and constituent glad-handing. Behind the larger-than-life persona, MacLean governed.

John Bullard learned this as soon as he arrived at New Bedford’s City Hall. The fresh-faced mayor, in 1986, found that the city had a deep revenue problem that was exacerbated by a perpetually malfunctioning assessor’s office. “The answer to me seemed clear,” Bullard said. “We had to get a professional assessor” to staff one of the city’s most important revenue-generating offices.

“I talked with Biff about it,” Bullard said, and immediately the wheels flew into motion. MacLean had the perfect expert, and he worked the phones until he persuaded a long-serving official in the department of local revenue, named Ed Collins, to present to New Bedford’s City Council. That, Bullard said, “gave legitimacy to the case beyond what I or Biff could do.”

But even more than the expert analysis of millions of dollars left on the table, or the fresh energy of his new mayoral term, Bullard remembers what really made the change: Biff came to oversee the hearing himself.

“I can’t even remember where I was sitting. But I remember where Biff was standing — to the left of the doorway to the council’s antechamber. From there he could see all the councilors and all the councilors could see him. And we won the vote.”

“That was a substantial thing that bettered the city of New Bedford and helped every single taxpayer. Biff helped people do the right thing,” Bullard said.

There were also lessons Bullard learned about how things really got done. The elder statesmen told Bullard about his first day as a legislator, decades earlier, when he went down to the RMV and shook hands with every single clerk and receptionist. Biff “wanted to know their names so when someone had a problem getting a registration or driver’s license renewed, he could call someone who actually did the work,” Bullard explained.

“He knew how to exercise power — both how to get power and how to use power,” Bullard said. “But he used that power to good effect, and many people benefited.”

The dance of Mr. December

At his core, MacLean was a salesman who worked like an athlete. He met his lifelong friend and loyal foot-soldier, Joaquim ‘Jack’ Nobrega, the 42-year veteran of New Bedford’s School Committee, as the two competed to sell insurance in the same neighborhoods of New Bedford. 

Biff was just better at it, Nobrega would later say.

It was almost impossible to outwork MacLean. At Fairhaven High School, Biff earned 14 varsity letters, including by playing halfback on the varsity football team from 8th through 12th grade. Throughout his whole life, MacLean just never seemed to tire. 

“Biff’s got a strong back and a will to succeed and he must have got a lot of that from his father,” said John Moore, a longtime friend of the MacLean family, in 2001.

But it was that hustle to sell insurance, incidentally, that led to the scandal that removed MacLean from office. In his guilty plea, MacLean admitted that his insurance company received payments from state employees’ retirement plans, and that some of that money was deposited into a joint account he held with his wife. 

Years after the scandal, MacLean would direct his attorney to defend his legacy in a letter to the editor of The Standard-Times: “The Massachusetts Ethics Commission had ruled earlier that there was nothing wrong with the senator having a financial interest in the sale of pensions to cities and counties,” the letter read. 

“What went wrong,” the letter continued, “and what constituted a misdemeanor violation, was MacLean’s having an indirect financial interest (i.e., that of his insurance business) in a contract with the state, the public entity that happened to be his employer.” 

MacLean found the local newspaper’s fascination with his dealings tiresome. And in turn, more than a few exhausted New Bedford journalists came to refer to MacLean as “He Who Shall Not Be Named,” while they hopelessly attempted to untangle all the handshake deals and personal favors that, it seemed, could maybe explain every corner of the city’s politics.

As the years stretched on, MacLean never stopped being a salesman for the city he once represented — or just a salesman in general. Bullard said he still has an insurance policy that MacLean sold to him — “Or at least I hope I do,” the former mayor said. 

“​The day Biff MacLean retires is the day he dies,” another unnamed state lawmaker was quoted as saying. It was part of the never-say-die, work-until-you-drop attitude that earned him the nickname “Mr. December” in the halls of the Statehouse — on account of his knack for passing bills in the closing days of the legislative session.

But never quitting also meant ceaselessly carrying forward those unsavory elements, too. 

In 2010, an independent counsel found that Biff’s son, Douglas MacLean, was the beneficiary of a corruption scheme inside Massachusetts’ Probation Department, largely owing to connections to his father. A former chief probation officer in the Bristol County Probate Court, James Casey, had rejected the younger MacLean’s job application at first, telling him, “You’ll never be a probation officer as long as I’m the commissioner of probation, Doug.” 

The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team summarized what happened next: “Several months later, Casey got a call from the commissioner’s office, telling him he was being assigned a new ‘acting’ probation officer… The new hire? Doug MacLean.”

The investigation found that friends and family of legislators were routinely hired over more qualified candidates, and in return those power brokers would boost the Probation Department’s budget. 

“The jobs were considered political currency,” the Boston Globe reported, in what may as well have been a description of Biff’s lifelong political strategy.

The man with many names and many scandals, in the end, had even more friends. The lifetime of working for New Bedford made him far-and-away the city’s most beloved politician. His many successes as one of the last great pork barrel politicians of Massachusetts reshaped the South Coast. The institutions that now stand may owe a debt of gratitude to Biff MacLean, but they will pay it back to the City of New Bedford and towns around the South Coast.

“If you write anything about me,” Biff once said, “say that I was always a guy coming from Southeastern Massachusetts who was proud to be a fisherman’s son, proud to represent his town [Fairhaven], extremely proud that my constituency elected me all through the years, even when I went through my difficult, dark time.”

Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org

Editor’s note: John K. Bullard was a three-term mayor of New Bedford and is a co-founder of The New Bedford Light. The Light’s newsroom is scrupulously independent. Only the editors decide what to cover and what to publish. Founders, funders and board members have no influence over editorial content.

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