AUSTIN -- There's probably nobody who needs the Legislature to approve school finance reform as much as Gov. Rick Perry and nobody who wants it more than Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

But ask around the state Capitol about who holds the keys to passing an overhaul of public education and taxes, and the name of another powerful Republican usually comes up: House Speaker Tom Craddick of Midland.

It was in Craddick's office, in the waning days of the just-concluded legislative session, that the landmark effort to overhaul school finance took its dying breath, according to Senate leaders and the governor's office.

Now all eyes are on the wealthy oil and gas man from West Texas as Perry -- who has at least two potential GOP primary opponents breathing down his neck -- contemplates the politically risky decision to bring legislators back in special session for another try.

"I think the guy holding the gun right now is Craddick," said Ross Ramsey, editor of the political newsletter Texas Weekly. "I think he could say, 'Let's go,' and they would go."

That Craddick would come to wield such power, and win so frequently, might have been difficult to discern before he became speaker in 2003 -- the first Republican in the job since 1871.

Elected to the House at age 25 in 1968, Craddick toiled for more than 30 years in the political wilderness -- an unapologetic Republican in a chamber controlled by Democrats.

He is outwardly mild-mannered, almost to the point of being sheepish. And if he has personal demons lurking inside, he hides them well. He's a teetotaler, weighs himself daily to ensure he's not eating too much and doesn't even drink coffee. His one vice: an unstoppable affinity for chocolate.

But in politics, when it comes to getting what he wants -- or blocking what he doesn't -- Craddick has no equal, say supporters and critics alike. Detractors say he uses that power to pass legislation that directly benefits his own industry and complain that he's too cozy with lobbyists.

Craddick says he thinks he's never had conflicts of interest. He says he helps the oil and gas industry not because he's in it but because that's what fuels the Midland economy and his district.

If he seems hardheaded, Craddick suggests it's because he negotiates deals -- tax deals, for example -- with an eye for what can pass the conservative House.

"You got to get the votes," he said with a shrug in a recent interview.

Whatever the speaker's motives, few dispute his shrewd and effective use of power.

Name the topic: University tuition. Taxes. Medical school funding. Congressional redistricting.

If Craddick takes an interest in it, he will stop at nothing to win -- and he wins more often than not.

"Tom is the kind of guy that if there are 10 issues, he wants all 10 of them," said Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, who served with Craddick in the House.

Craddick seems to thrive in particular during 11th-hour negotiations, when deadlines threaten to derail all kinds of bills and the political heat to produce a compromise intensifies.

In 2003, for example, the Legislature was in its third special session over congressional redistricting, trying to hammer out a deal aimed at producing more Republican representatives in Washington.

Although Democrats had blocked previous efforts by fleeing to Oklahoma and New Mexico, robbing the Legislature of a quorum, in the end Republicans were fighting one another -- or, more specifically, fighting Craddick.

That's because the speaker was determined to center a new congressional district in Midland and Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, seemed just as determined to keep a largely rural district anchored in his hometown.

Finally, the architect of the redistricting effort -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land -- flew in from Washington to forge a deal and stop the internal bloodshed.

Duncan recalled that DeLay's presence put so much pressure on his fellow senators that he could no longer "hold the line" to keep the West Texas district intact.

And Craddick?

"The speaker is pretty much a don't blink, don't budge negotiator," Duncan said. "I don't think (the pressure) mattered to him. I think what mattered to him was that Midland got a congressional seat."

It did.

Fast-forward two years, and the same hard-edged style emerges, even if the issues have changed. From relatively small budgetary matters to the signature issue of the session -- school finance -- Craddick once again played an oversize role.

Take the tax legislation that lawmakers have been mulling for months.

Both the House and Senate offered plans that would pay for a property tax cut with new, higher taxes on businesses and consumers. But the House plan took such a small bite out of business that Brimer, the Fort Worth senator, called it a "corporate giveaway."

Other senators complained, mostly privately, that House Bill 3, ostensibly designed to close business loopholes, actually opened new ones under Craddick's version. Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said as much in an interview with the Quorum Report. She later said the comments weren't intended for publication, but she didn't deny making them.

Craddick "didn't close any loopholes in HB 3," Shapiro said.

In the final compromise that Craddick offered his Senate counterparts, certain entities -- namely, publicly traded limited liability companies -- would actually get a new exemption from the state franchise tax, documents show.

The bill also would have retained exemptions for publicly traded limited partnerships as long as 90 percent of their income comes from dividends, rent, the sale of property or income "derived from the exploration, development, mining or production, processing, refining, transportation ... or the marketing of any mineral or natural resource."

Craddick said the bill as offered to the Senate was not designed to help oil and gas interests or any other industry but was the "fairest" plan -- and the only one that could get the votes needed to pass in the House.

"If you say, 'Well, I'm in the oil and gas business, so therefore I'm helped.' Well, I've never in my belief had any kind of conflict of interest," Craddick said.

The speaker said he asked his accountant to check out the bill's effect on his own dealings and was told that it would not change his tax liability.

"It didn't help me in any oil and gas interest I had," Craddick said.

In the end, the House and Senate never got close to agreeing on the tax overhaul, so an exemption here and a carve-out there may not have made a difference. What is clear is that no matter how small the detail, Craddick rarely yields.

When it came time to pass a $2 billion emergency funding bill last month, for example, the Senate and Perry were seeking funds for an El Paso medical school and the Irma Rangel Pharmacy School in South Texas for a combined appropriation of about $50 million.

"I'm used to trading with Speaker Craddick. He doesn't bluff a lot ... so I conceded," Ogden said. "I believed the speaker and didn't want to play chicken with the speaker."

Craddick's moxie might be attributable in part to the way he gets elected and the fact that he doesn't want any other job.

Like most of his fellow legislators -- and unlike Perry and Dewhurst, the Republican Senate leader -- Craddick is not elected statewide. He only has to be popular in his Midland County district and then get 75 of his House colleagues to make him speaker.

Unless those votes dry up, Perry and Dewhurst will have to deal with the Midland power broker. Perry faces potential primary challenges from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn.

Ogden said he's learned that Craddick can be brought to the negotiating table if there is something to trade. The trick is finding out what he wants, because he's likely to say "no" until you do, Ogden said.

"He's pretty stubborn," Ogden said. "He's ready to say 'no' on just about everything, and it's hard to know what he wants to do because he doesn't volunteer it. That's just the way it is."