Gingrich to sit out presidential race - Poised to announce an exploratory bid, the Georgia Republican will instead keep leading a political action group.

"Sometimes you have to decide what the right role is," he said in a telephone interview. "This is right for me."

The Georgia Republican said his legal advisors told him Saturday morning that federal law would prohibit his fundraising for a presidential race unless he quit a fledgling political action organization that separately raises money to seek solutions to national problems.

"Anything that could be construed as helping my campaign in any way is potentially a criminal offense" under the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms, Gingrich said.

Gingrich, 64, who placed third in some early national polls of Republican voters, said he had planned to announce an exploratory campaign operation Monday.

He had taken a leave of absence from his role as a political commentator on Fox News, had prepared a campaign website and was committed to trying to raise $30 million as the necessary ante for a national race, he said.

"We were ready to explore," he said. "But I was not prepared to walk away from something we had spent a year building just to explore."

Gingrich said he decided to abandon his presidential ambitions rather than step down as chairman of American Solutions. The organization, which claims 19,000 members, has sponsored 2,000 workshops nationwide, organized online seminars and conducted other programs. It aims to find comprehensive solutions to immigration, national defense, education and other national issues, according to its website.

"If I walked away on Monday, it probably would not survive without me," Gingrich said. "In a few years, once it gets going, it can survive."

Gingrich's absence from the presidential race could benefit the candidacy of Fred Thompson, a former senator and fellow Southerner who has sought to appeal to the party's core conservative voters. Gingrich remains popular among many conservatives, who remember him as the articulate, hard-charging architect of the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, which ended 40 years of Democratic control.

But given his relatively modest poll numbers, his exit may have little of a ripple effect.