Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin overcame weeks of Republican attack ads to win the West Virginia governor's race Tuesday, successfully distancing himself from the Obama administration and the president's health care plan.
Tomblin, who has been acting governor for the past year, will finish the final year of a term left vacant by Joe Manchin, a well-liked governor who stepped down after he won a U.S. Senate seat.
The race was fraught with negative ads from both sides and narrowed in the final weeks. The national parties spent millions of dollars on each campaign.
With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Tomblin had 50 percent of the vote compared with Republican Bill Maloney's 47 percent, according to unofficial results.
Tomblin campaigned as the rightful heir to Manchin. He said together they helped shape policies that created pain-free balanced budgets and revenue surpluses at a time when other states continued to struggle during the recession.
A veteran state lawmaker, Tomblin fended off questions about his mother's greyhound breeding business and efforts to tie him to Obama. Republicans were upset Tomblin didn't join a majority of other states who sued the administration in an effort to overturn the health care plan.
Obama lost West Virginia in 2008 and remains wildly unpopular here, but Tomblin got a replay of last year's U.S. Senate special election, when Manchin beat back efforts to tie him to Obama.
Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 in West Virginia, but they are considered more conservative than their national counterparts on both social and fiscal issues, supporting gun rights and cutting taxes.
Maloney called to congratulate Tomblin before conceding the race at a gathering of campaign backers in Morgantown, where he has been a drilling engineer and became a millionaire businessman.
The Obama ads featured images of the president floating on the screen with Tomblin. One spot asks: "What's Gov. Tomblin doing about Obamacare? Absolutely nothing."
Tomblin, meanwhile, used ads to blame Maloney for sending jobs to Pennsylvania when the drilling firm he co-founded moved there. But the relocation came four years after Maloney sold his shares in the company.
Tomblin wasn't as well known as Manchin, who resigned during his second term to fill the vacancy created by the death of 92-year-old U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd. Tomblin became acting governor because of his position as Senate president, a job he held longer than anyone else in the state.
Tomblin drew a contrast between himself and Obama by saying West Virginia was far more economically sound than the country. The state has an unemployment rate below both the national rate and also has begun gradually cutting both business and consumer taxes, while improving its Wall Street credit rating and emergency reserves, points frequently noted by Tomblin's campaign.
Like Manchin, Tomblin sparred with tougher coal mining regulations from the Obama administration, keeping up a lawsuit the former governor filed against the Environmental Protection Agency's handling of permits.
Tomblin must resume campaigning almost immediately to keep the seat: It's up again in 2012 for a full four-year term.
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Associated Press writers Vicki Smith in Morgantown and Pam Ramsey and John Raby in Charleston contributed to this report.