Clinton proteges seeking their own offices

They were young and eager in the 1990s, these midlevel functionaries, hotshot lawyers and one Cabinet secretary in his father's shadow, all inspired by the same boss: President Clinton.

Nowhere is the Clinton class more evident than in New York, where the ex-president and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton now live. Four of five Democrats hoping to succeed Eliot Spitzer as New York's attorney general served in the Clinton administration.

"What you're seeing is, politicized Democrats tend to be younger than average at this level and still have a lot of politics left in them," said Stephen Hess, a professor at George Washington University.

One Clinton alumnus is Charlie King, a candidate for state attorney general. " Bill Clinton represented the same sort of catalyst to my generation that JFK had to the generation before Clinton," King said.

"He reminded all of us that you can do great things through public service and do great things for the lives of others," King said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060611/ap_on_el_ge/clinton_s_class