Linking one class to multiple MovieClips

Is it possible to link one class to multiple MovieClips? This seems like a pretty basic thing to do, but Flash doesn’t allow it. If there’s no way to actually do this, does anyone have a good workaround?
What I’m trying to do is create a number of navigation items with different graphics, animations and hit areas, but reusing the same functionality. I tried subclassing the main NavItem class with a bunch of empty subclasses, but that seems ridiculously clumsy. Also, it seems that when I do that, I can no longer access Clips on the timeline from the main superclass.

Any thoughts or links to where I can find a solution?
Thanks a lot.

Dave