CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- For someone who has served in the Legislature for more than 35 years -- including the past 25 in the high-profile positions of Senate Finance Committee chairman and Senate president - Earl Ray Tomblin remains something of an enigma.

"Earl Ray is an exceedingly private person," said Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin, who came to the Senate in 1983, two years after Tomblin.

"I've known him as long as anybody in the Senate. I've probably watched more 'Jeopardy!' with him than anybody," Chafin added, referring to Tomblin's obsession with watching the quiz show each evening - and more often than not, answering the questions ahead of the contestants.

There's an old saying that the easiest way to get injured at the Capitol is to get between a politician and a TV camera - but that doesn't apply to Tomblin, a Logan County Democrat and the longest-serving Senate president in state history. Until recent years, Tomblin had been camera-shy, if not leery of the media, frequently exiting Senate chambers after floor sessions, before the press corps could reach him for interviews.

Chafin, D-Mingo, contrasted Tomblin with Gov. Joe Manchin, the man he will replace, at least temporarily: "Joe's all showmanship and what have you. Earl Ray is more quiet and behind-the-scenes."

He suggested that Tomblin prefers to choose his words carefully, rather than to make off-the-cuff comments.

"He's very careful not to tell you something and then not do it," Chafin said. "He doesn't want anybody to say that he lied, or didn't follow through, or wasn't completely truthful."

One Senate staffer described Tomblin as a rare politician who would rather listen than talk.

Former House speaker Bob Kiss, who worked with Tomblin as legislative leaders and Finance Committee chairmen, agreed.

"He and I would always joke that, at the [annual] Chamber of Commerce breakfast, they couldn't get me to shut up, and they couldn't get him to say anything," Kiss recalled.

"He's not a person, I think, who likes to give long speeches," Kiss said. "He's more of a nuts-and-bolts person, predicated on getting things accomplished."

"He's a listener and a thinker," said Becky Neal, who was Tomblin's legislative assistant from 1992 to 2003. "He'll bring everybody into his office who has an interest in an issue, and he'll listen to everyone around the table, and try to reach a consensus."

'Earl Ray Tomblin should be at the top of that list'

As one longtime Logan County politico who asked not be identified put it, he's known Tomblin for all his adult life, but doesn't really have a clue about him as a person.

In his home county, Tomblin is known as cordial and personable, but also as intensely private. For the most part, he keeps to himself at his family's secluded, gated homestead on a hillside on the outskirts of Chapmanville.

His avocations include gardening and riding the Hatfield-McCoy trails on his ATV.

He's not particularly active in community affairs in the county, the county official noted: "To the voters, he's more of an image than a person."

Likewise, not a lot is revealed about Tomblin's professional life away from the Capitol.

Tomblin's legislative biography identifies his profession as "self-employed businessman," and his financial disclosure to the state Ethics Commission lists his only employment, other than Senate president, as being general manager of Tomblin Rentals, an unincorporated business that handles various rental properties he owns in the Logan area.

In fact, the last "name" business Tomblin worked for was the family-owned Southern Amusement Co., a vending machine company that was one of the state's largest distributors of so-called "gray" video poker machines prior to legislation in 2001 legalizing limited video lottery statewide.

Tomblin left Southern Amusement in December 1994, after being nominated for Senate president in the Senate Democratic caucus.

During his first session as Senate president, critics accused Tomblin of scuttling a bill that would have legalized riverboat gambling in the state, claiming that he was trying to protect the family's "gray machine" interests.

Later that year, the Tomblins sold Southern Amusement to Joe C. Ferrell, a former state delegate from Logan County who pleaded guilty to racketeering and tax charges in federal court last month.

During that period, Tomblin also was dogged by accusations regarding the state Greyhound Breeders Development Fund. The fund, intended to bolster the state's then-new greyhound racing business, used 1.5 percent of what initially was a minimal amount of revenue from the then-newly introduced racetrack video lottery machines, to enhance purses for winning greyhounds at the state's two dog tracks.

However, with the explosion of video slots at the state's racetracks in the early 1990s, the fund quickly topped $3 million a year, with top breeders - including Tomblin Kennels, owned by Tomblin's mother, Freda - claiming prize money exceeding $300,000 a year.

Tomblin insisted throughout that he had no involvement in the breeders' fund legislation, or in the kennel.

Likewise, eyebrows were raised in 1999, when the state college governing board of the time selected Tomblin's wife, Joanne, as president of Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, even though she was one of only two applicants out of a field of 39 without a doctoral degree.

However, Joanne Tomblin continues to serve as the college's president, and is generally regarded as one of the state's leading community college administrators.

Earl Ray Tomblin also drew heat during that time for his role in helping transform the legislative Budget Digest from a mere list of details regarding certain items in the state budget bill into a mechanism that allowed prominent legislators to direct millions of dollars in state funds to various home-district programs and projects.

At its peak, the now-defunct Budget Digest diverted about $23 million annually to various pork-barrel projects around the state.

However, Kiss noted that, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tomblin helped put in place fiscal policies that will save the state billions of dollars over time.

He said that Manchin made an issue during the Senate campaign about getting the state's fiscal house in order, but much of the groundwork for the state's financial policy was already in place when Manchin became governor.

Kiss said there is no one person in the state more responsible for the state's fiscal health than Tomblin, who helped craft efforts to pay down state pension and Workers' Compensation Fund liabilities, establish "Rainy Day" funds in the event of financial crises, and cut taxes in a fiscally prudent manner.

"Without getting into any other names," Kiss said, "Earl Ray Tomblin should be at the top of that list."

'He has great respect for the Senate, and he expects you to respect it, too'

During his 15 years as Senate president, Tomblin has maintained two things: a year-round tan, and a preternatural calm in the face of sometimes near-chaos on the Senate floor.

"He's exceedingly cool under fire," Chafin said.

"He's not the kind of person who loses his cool by blowing up, throwing things or yelling at people," Kiss concurred. "He takes a lot of time to study things analytically, to come up with solutions to complex problems."

Tomblin also is a stickler for maintaining the rules and traditions of the Senate.

Unlike the House chamber, with such modern features as laptop computers for the members and computerized message boards, the Senate chamber is essentially unchanged from 1932, with the exception of an electronic vote board and an audio sound system.

Senators who violate the Senate's rules of decorum - addressing a colleague by name, rather than by home county or district, for instance - can be assured of a quick rebuke from Tomblin.

"He has great respect for the Senate," said Neal, "and he expects you to respect it, too."

'In a way, he's spent his whole life getting ready for this'

Those who have worked with Tomblin expect a seamless transition into his role as acting governor.

As governor, Kiss said, "his approach is going to be the same ... level-headedness, analytical, deliberative and, ultimately, coming to a consensus decision."

Politically, Tomblin's positions closely parallel those of Manchin - conservative on fiscal issues, and conservative-to-moderate on social issues.

"His whole life's work has been public service," said Chafin, noting that Tomblin, who is 58, was first elected to the Legislature in 1974, when he was a senior at West Virginia University.

"He's probably more qualified than almost anyone who has held that office," Chafin said.

Kiss said that's particularly true regarding fiscal policy.

"There's no one who's served in that office ... that has the degree or depth of knowledge of the state budget process that he does," Kiss said.

Chafin believes Tomblin has been preparing for the possibility of serving as acting governor from the time he first became Senate president in 1995.

"In a way," Chafin said, "he's spent his whole life getting ready for this."

Reach Phil Kabler at ph...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1220.