CHICAGO — Democratic presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. wrangled nastily about political ethics for a second straight day Monday, their arguments leaving former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas on the outside looking in on the eve of today's Illinois and Michigan primaries.

The contentious Brown-Clinton feud began in a televised debate Sunday night and continued Monday. The spat arose when the former California governor, citing a newspaper article that made no such allegation, accused Clinton of funneling state money to his wife's law firm. The dispute then spilled over into the last day of campaigning before the primaries in the two industrial states.

Campaigning in Michigan, Brown repeated his accusation and said the Arkansas governor, who Sunday night issued a furious defense of his wife, was hiding behind Hillary Clinton.

"It's really kind of pathetic," said Brown, adding: "This business of a scandal a week, it's not good for the Democratic Party."

Clinton, overwhelmed with questions about Brown's accusations as he closed out his campaign in the two states, told Michigan students that Brown "should have been ashamed of himself" for attacking Hillary Clinton.

"That's why I stood up for her," Clinton said of his finger-jabbing response to Brown in the debate, which was televised in Illinois and Michigan and nationally over the cable network C-SPAN.

"If he does it again, I'll stick it to him again," Clinton told students at Wayne Memorial High School outside Detroit.

Hillary Clinton, a lawyer before she married her husband, leaped to her own defense and called Brown "a desperate man."

"It's about time he tells us what he would do that's positive and that would turn this country around," said Hillary Clinton, who campaigned with her husband throughout the day Monday.

The Clinton campaign sought to land some last-minute blows of its own, distributing to reporters copies of several articles in The Times and other newspapers about financial controversies involving Brown during his years as California's governor.

Among the reprints was a 1980 Times editorial commenting on a lengthy investigation the paper conducted into the Brown Administration's use of state funds to assemble a massive computerized list of political contributors.

The pitched dispute between Clinton and Brown all but drowned out Tsongas, the third of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates, as he struggled to keep his faltering candidacy alive.