He really, truly is a good man, and I wish him well. We went to the same doctor for many years, and I spent a good deal of time chatting with him in the waiting room.
He grew up in a time and place where segregation was taught to everybody. But within that framework (obviously mistaken and wrong) he was never hateful or mean. He is a stubborn man, and always found it hard to back down. But he always tried to be as fair as he knew how.
People who worked for him - black and white - loved him. His office door was always open to any citizen who had something he or she wanted to talk to the governor about, just walk in and tell him what was on your mind. He was also the first governor of Georgia to appoint a black person to statewide office (he said it was only fair), and he left office poorer than he went in - the ONLY governor who did not profit from his time in office.
So we could have done a lot worse. And as for machinations, the only reason Maddox got the nomination in the first place was all the Republicans who crossed over and voted in the Democratic primary, thinking he would be easier to beat. And you may or may not recall that his opponent was "Bo" Callaway, who later left a national Republican administration post under a cloud. (To the extent that the Army recalled all the commissions he had signed, including my husband's, and substituted commissions over the signature of the new Secretary of the Army.)
He's truly his own man. He had nothing good to say about Clinton, spoke highly of Bush, and he absolutely loathes Jimmy Carter. He had no party loyalty when it came to matters he thought important and he did more for bringing blacks into state government than any governor before or since.
Having met the man, I for one will miss him.