In addition to his real estate business, MacLean began to pursue politics almost immediately after arriving in Granville. In February 1886, he worked to petition the provincial legislature to incorporate and rename the town, and as a result, on April 6, the city of Vancouver was formed.
Mayoralty A mayoral election for the newly formed city was held on 3 May 1886. The race was extremely close: MacLean's opponent,
Richard H. Alexander, was favored to win due to his support from the long-established elite, as Alexander had arrived in British Columbia during the colonial days. MacLean, though, pulled support largely from three groups: other newly arrived
Manitobans and
Ontarians (whom Alexander had dismissed as "North American Chinamen"); workers at Hastings sawmill involved in a labour dispute against Alexander, the mill's owner, who had pledged to hire Chinese workers to replace
striking white workers; and the
Knights of Labor, also driven by anti-Chinese sentiment. MacLean won the election with 242 votes against Alexander's 225—a difference of just seventeen votes—and on 25 May, MacLean was made Justice of the Peace. Days later, supporters of Alexander (including later mayor
David Oppenheimer) officially petitioned
Victoria, claiming that at least 100 ballots had been
cast illegally; fifty years later, backers of MacLean confirmed in interviews that many had voted illegally, including "houseboat tenants" and "itinerant hotel guests." The voting scandal was quickly forgotten in the wake of the
Great Vancouver Fire on 13 June 1886. Following the inferno, MacLean and his council members successfully convinced Governor General
Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne to give the military reserve in
Burrard Inlet to the city, which became
Stanley Park. In December 1886, MacLean was re-elected mayor, having run on a platform to extend the franchise and to restrict the property rights of the city's
ethnic Chinese residents. MacLean was greatly focused on the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, calling it "the placing of the keystone in the arch of confederation;" after three months of unofficial use, the first official train arrived in Vancouver on 23 May 1887. Later that year, the
Vancouver Board of Trade was formed, and MacLean presided over its inaugural meeting. By 1888, MacLean claimed credit for improvements around Vancouver such as the clearing and grading of streets and the construction of vital infrastructure. ==Post-mayoralty==