Former Rhode Island Governor Chafee mulls White House run

(Reuters) - Former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee said on Thursday he was mulling a run for the White House, becoming the first Democrat to publicly challenge presumed front-runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Chafee served eight years in the U.S. Senate as a Republican, then changed his party affiliation to independent when he ran for governor of Rhode Island in 2010. In 2013, his last year in office, he changed his party affiliation to Democrat. "Throughout my career, I exercised good judgment on a wide range of high-pressure decisions, decisions that require level-headedness and careful foresight," Chafee said in a statement as he announced that he had formed an exploratory committee to consider a run for the Democratic presidential bid in 2016. "Often these decisions came in the face of political adversity." Clinton, who is expected to announce her second run for the White House this month, is far and away the leading candidate for her party's nomination, with polls showing more than half of registered Democratic voters supporting her presumed bid. That is more than four times the support of the next most popular candidates, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has repeatedly said she is not interested in running, and Vice President Joseph Biden. Chafee was first appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1999 when his father, John Chafee, died in office, and was elected in 2000 to a six-year term. He lost a 2006 re-election bid to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. His first run for governor, in 2010, was successful but he opted not to seek a second term. (Reporting by Scott Malone in Fall River, Massachusetts; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)