WASHINGTON (AFP) — Ending months of speculation, former US House speaker Newt Gingrich announced Saturday he will not seek the Republican Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election.
The influential Republican, whose candidacy would have likely made him an immediate top-tier candidate, said campaign finance laws would have barred him from exploring a candidacy while continuing his leadership role at his political organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future.
"It created such severe penalties that I would literally have to step down and resign, even to look at whether or not to consider running," Gingrich, 64, said in a recording on his website, www.newt.org.
"I think that basically ended the conversation," he said. "I'm not going to walk off and allow American Solutions to collapse at this point."
American Solutions for Winning the Future describes itself as a non-partisan organization seeking to rise above "traditional gridlocked partisanship" to provide political solutions on a wide-range of issues.
Gingrich, a favorite of US conservatives who led his party's historic takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994 during Democratic president Bill Clinton's presidency, serves as chairman of the organization.
"It's frankly far more important than an exploratory process for the presidential campaign," Gingrich said, referring to this organization.
Nine Republicans are running for their party's nomination for the 2008 election.
The leading Republican candidates are former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Senator John McCain and television actor and former senator Fred Thompson.
The Democratic Party, which controlled the House for 40 years from 1954-1994, took back the lower chamber from the Republicans in last November's elections.
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