He was like a lot of other people who talk about the need to improve things where they live.

"So I went around trying to talk to my friends and neighbors, saying, 'I'd like for you to run for elected office,"' he said.

He got no takers.

"But they would turn the tables and say, 'You do that.' So I ran for the Screven County Commission in 1992," said Mr. Burns, the Republican rival of Democrat Charles W. Walker Jr. for the 12th Congressional District seat.

Mr. Burns ran as a Democrat in the 1992 election and again two years later, a fact Mr. Walker uses against him.

"He has tricked the people by telling people he's a Republican when he ran as a Democrat," Mr. Walker said.

Mr. Burns said it made sense to run as a Democrat in Screven County.

Max Burns, the Republican candidate for the District 12 congressional seat, says voters in the district need someone who can be trusted to represent them and who has nothing to gain. ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/STAFF

"I didn't change my positions," Mr. Burns said. "I didn't change my philosophy. I've been a Republican since the 1980s, but in Screven County in 1992 it made sense to run under the Democratic ticket because of the county and the way the local elections were conducted."

He was elected that year and re-elected in 1994. He ran again as a Republican in 1998 and was defeated because of a controversial zoning and land-use management plan, he said.

"We knew that our county was being taken advantage of by people who would come in and buy a tract of land and split it up and not provide any improvements of roads or water or sanitary sewer or drainage," he said. "Then they would sell those lots to individuals and abandon them. Then the residents would come to the county commission for help. So that's what we were facing.

"We border Bulloch and Effingham, very fast-growing communities. So we had cheaper land with no guidelines on its use."

But the timing couldn't have been worse for him politically, he said.

"I had to face re-election right at the time we were dealing with this issue. And a number of people suggested we delay it until after the election. I said, 'No way. We've got to go ahead and do what we need to do. It's the right thing to do. We have to make sure we protect our community."'

Mr. Walker and his political strategists have used the issue to suggest that the land-use plan discriminated against poor black residents.

The plan, still in effect unchanged, was developed by a large biracial committee that worked with consultants of the Department of Community Affairs, Mr. Burns said.

When he joined the Screven County Commission in 1993, there were virtually no black employees in county government, but that had changed by the time he left, Mr. Burns said.

"I've been able to work effectively with the white community and the black community," Mr. Burns said. "I've been able to bring them together. My opponent, certainly the history with his father, Charles Walker Sr., here in Richmond County has been to keep them separate, keep them divided, keep the two communities at odds."

As Screven County commissioner, Mr. Burns worked closely with Commissioner J.C. Warren, the county's first black chairman. Mr. Warren has the highest praise for Mr. Burns, calling him a "fair, honest family man," who will do the right thing, even if it hurts.

Both men are Georgia high school sports officials.

"Maxie does football, and I do basketball," Mr. Warren said. "Max Burns did a game in Screven County some years ago. Folks still buzz about that a little bit because they feel like Max threw a flag on Screven and caused them probably not to make the playoff that year. But Maxie did the right thing."

Mr. Burns was born in Millen in 1948, when the city was a "thriving metropolis" with five passenger trains going through daily. He grew up on the family farm outside Sylvania, graduated from high school with honors in 1967 and worked his way through Georgia Tech on a co-op program that allowed him to work for Pan American World Airways and see the world.

In 1973, he went to work for what is now known as the North American Mission Board, where he ran and developed the agency's computer information system. While there, he met his future wife, Lora, and earned his master's degree from Georgia State University in Atlanta.

He worked for Oxford Industries for four years, then went back to Georgia State and taught while he worked on his doctorate degree in information systems. After finishing the core work, he moved back to the family farm in Sylvania, built a house and began teaching at Georgia Southern.

In 1990, he was awarded a fellowship at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where he spent six months teaching corporate information management. In 1993, he went to Sweden on a senior Fulbright scholarship in corporate information management.

Last year, he was the visiting fellow at Massey University at Aukland, New Zealand.

Mr. Burns said he got into the 12th District race because he was convinced that Charles Walker Sr. had created the district for his son, and the district would suffer from lack of representation, just as he said it did under Rep. Cynthia McKinney for 10 years.

"I got in this race for one basic reason, to make sure that this district had someone to represent them, that they could rely on, that they could trust, that had no personal gain," Mr. Burns said.

MAX BURNS

AGE: 53

OCCUPATION: Professor of business at Georgia Southern University, 1983-present

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Screven County Industrial Authority, 1990; Screven County Commission, 1993-98

EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech, 1973; master's degree in business information systems from Georgia State University, 1978; doctorate in business administration from Georgia State University, 1987

MILITARY: Georgia Tech's Distinguished Military Graduate, 1973; eight years in the Army Reserve

HOBBIES: Serving as a high school football official, hunting, fishing, raising Limousin cattle

FAMILY: Wife, Lora; two sons, Andrew, 25, and Nathan, 22

RELIGION: Baptist, member and deacon at Jackson Baptist Church in Sylvania

Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228 or sylviaco@augustachronicle.com.

--From the Sunday, October 20, 2002 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle