A child of a candidate takes on his mom's cause

Sharing the challenge with Chelsea
Other than their common goal of mobilizing young people, Tilden shares another challenge with Chelsea; both of their mothers have uphill fights ahead.

Hagan currently leads in the polls against her primary challenger, businessman Jim Neal, but the winner of the Democratic matchup in North Carolina will face Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole.

Critics note that an ill-fated stint as NRSC chairwoman and a spotty record on constituent services have lost Dole a few allies.

But even some Democratic strategists admit that Dole's skillful political style and statistic-defying name recognition in the state make her almost bullet-proof against a challenger like Tilden's mom.

Hagan's son is confident. "I guess I don't see it that way," he replies when asked about the tall odds projected by pundits. He knows that politics can be an unpredictable game, and Democrats are energized enough this cycle to turn the "C.W." (conventional wisdom) on its head.

"I think it's very winnable," he says.

Despite his sunny outlook, though, he's no stranger to the tough task of coolly standing by as a parent takes public heat.

He confesses to fruitlessly searching for an excuse to avoid watching the first Democratic primary debate because he was so nervous on his mom's behalf.

"At the end of it," he laughs, "I realized I'd pretty much been holding my breath for an entire hour."

Video Chelsea Clinton confronts Monica question March 25: Chelsea Clinton had a quick retort when asked about the Monica Lewinsky scandal during a visit to Butler University in Indianapolis. Nightly News

Picking up the newspaper can be tough too. "When you read something that's personally attacking your mother," he says, recalling some of the more scathing critiques that he read during her first state senate run, "Well, I take it pretty personally myself."

For that reason, he sympathizes with Chelsea Clinton, who has famously faced questions on the campaign trail about her father's headline-grabbing sex scandals in the 1990s. Tilden says that he hasn't been confronted yet with a question that he found too personal to answer. "But if there comes a time," he adds, "I'll know it."

The fight for better medical care
No matter what the result of the North Carolina primary and general election, Tilden – who was just accepted to medical school at the University of North Carolina – has his eyes on a science far more exact than politics. An aspiring neuroscientist, he hopes to help engineer a new generation of nerve implants for patients with prosthetic limbs.

His schooling in politics shines through, though, when he's asked if he would ever consider following in his mother's footsteps. He promises to encourage her to take the fight for better medical care to Washington if his mom is elected, but says he has no plans to join her there.

Well, not yet.

"It's definitely something that I could see myself doing in the future," he admits.

Either way, at some point, he will have to go back to San Diego to retrieve some the relics of the old life he left behind.

Try as he might, last January, he just couldn't fit all of his stuff in that car.

Picking the president: The candidates Click to visit that candidate's MSNBC page or click the XML symbol for an RSS feed. John McCain                Barack Obama

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