House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced Friday that he would not pursue another term after four years.

Gingrich, a Republican, became the most powerful congressman in 1994, launching the controversial and ambitious “Contract with America.”

But he made enemies along the way, and after last Tuesday’s election results — when Democrats made modest gains in Congress — Gingrich announced he would step down for the good of the party.

“We have to get the bitterness out,” he told fellow Republicans and The Associated Press last week. “It is clear that as long as I’m around, that won’t happen.”

The new speaker will take over in January.

After rallying support from most Republican House members, the leading favorite for speaker is Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston.

“It is too early to tell what kind of speaker [Livingston] will be, but one of the reasons Republicans have swung their support towards him is he is not as controversial as Gingrich,” said Patrick James, chairman of Iowa State’s political science department. “He will not make as much of a stir as Gingrich, and he is less extreme.”

ISU Democrats President Molly Klein said Gingrich’s announcement came as a “big surprise,” but it was not totally unexpected.

“The Republican Party’s election results were pretty bad, and someone had to take the fall,” said Klein, sophomore in political science.

James agreed that Gingrich became the scapegoat for the party’s poor election performance.

“I think like everybody else it was surprising to me, but immediately after when you start to think why it would happen, you come to the conclusion that someone was going to take the fall,” he said.

James said the Monica Lewinsky scandal may have played a key role in voter response.

“Even the congressman who dislike Clinton, many of them who would enjoy to see Clinton get censured and punished, grew weary of the investigation,” James said. “It is an example of what I call the ‘O.J. effect.’

“People are very tired of constantly seeing it, and then with all of the ads attacking Clinton, they wanted relief; they were really tired,” he said.

Americans are content with the election results, Klein said.

“I think that it was just that people were fed up with the Monica Lewinsky thing, and there is now a sigh of relief,” she said. “People were tired of seeing it all the time; now they want closure for this issue.”

Republicans will be able to rebuild the party after awhile, James said.

“My impression is that if recent history holds up, the Republicans will rebound from what I would call a pseudo-disaster,” he said. “It was not as bad as the disaster the Democrats went through in 1992, where they, of course, lost control of Congress.”

James said Republicans will need to learn from the “backlash” and rebound for the year 2000 campaign.

“I think that we will see an upsurge of power of moderate Republicans,” he said. “They are not as controversial as … Newt, and not as extreme. They will learn a lot from this.”