You and I both know the saying — nice guys finish last. It is unfortunate, but many of the best people, the people we would want in office, are the people least likely to run for office. And when they do step up to run, because they aren’t in the established fray of politicians, they are typically treated as quixotic candidates.

Some of them are. Some of them aren’t. One guy who is a nice guy and probably the most qualified person to ever run for Attorney General in Georgia in the past few decades is my friend and very literal neighbor, Max Wood.

Max got introduced to retail politics the hard way. I volunteered on his campaign for the Bibb County Board of Education when I was a College Republican at Mercer University. As fast as Max could get his yard signs out, his opponent would tear them up. Max lost.

He practiced law for a few years, then George W. Bush appointed him United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. That made life interesting in our neighborhood.

Max prosecuted Malachi York, a child molester who led the Nuwaubian cult in Georgia.

Max successful secured a guilty verdict against York on over 100 counts of child molestation — some of the children were as young as four years old. During that time, Max Wood received lots of death threats from the cult members who believed York was some sort of god. Our neighborhood got real safe with all the police cars passing through.

But Max wasn’t just committed to prosecuting bad guys. He packed his bags and headed off to Iraq to help build, from scratch, Iraq’s legal system. Max became the U.S. Justice Department’s attaché to Baghdad for a year.

This guy is a good guy. I know him and his family. He should be Attorney General. Compared to the guys he is running against there is just no better guy than Max.

But he needs a lot of help in the next few weeks as Georgia heads to the polls on July 20th. For those of you in Georgia, I’ve voted for Max and I hope you will too.