Brown and Clinton in Bitter Clash : Democrats: Californian accuses opponent and wife of conflicts of interest. Angry Clinton calls him an unprincipled politician.

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. attacked Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and his wife for conflicts of interest in a televised debate here Sunday night, leading a furious Clinton to accuse Brown of making a “lying accusation” and to declare him “not worth being on the same platform with my wife.”

Brown, referring to a story in Sunday’s Washington Post, accused Clinton of “funneling money to his wife’s law firm.” The story did not, in fact, make such a direct accusation.

“Let me tell you something, Jerry,” said Clinton, shaking his finger in anger at Brown. “I don’t care what you say about me. . . . But you ought to be ashamed of yourself for jumping on my wife.”

“I feel sorry for Jerry Brown,” Clinton said, accusing the former governor of being an unprincipled politician who “reinvents himself every year or two” and who is willing to “say anything” to get elected.

“I don’t think you can take much of what he says seriously,” Clinton added.

Brown said that questions about Hillary Clinton’s financial dealings with the state of Arkansas were a “major scandal” that involved “not only corruption” but an “environmental disaster” because some of her firm’s clients had contributed to pollution in the state.

The bitter exchange toward the close of the hourlong debate all but left out the third candidate in the race, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas. “Can I get a word in edgewise?” Tsongas plaintively asked at one point, as Brown and Clinton verbally pummeled each other.

The debate, broadcast live here and in Michigan and nationally on the C-SPAN cable network, came just 36 hours before polls open in the two states for what could be the decisive primary election of the spring campaign.

Polls in both states continued to show Clinton ahead, by a large margin in Illinois but with less certainty in Michigan.

With Tsongas seemingly mired well behind Clinton, Brown has sought to push his insurgent campaign forward by capitalizing on voter anger in Michigan’s battered industrial areas. He repeatedly has tried to tie Clinton to “special interests,” accusing him of taking campaign contributions from lobbyists and of supporting policies that favor business, in particular the negotiations with Mexico over a free-trade agreement with the United States.

Brown also has taken the lead in reminding voters of questions about Clinton’s personal life. But Sunday’s debate marked the first time that any of the candidates have broadened the issue to include Hillary Clinton’s conduct.

The topic could cause additional problems for the Arkansas governor’s campaign, giving him yet another issue to explain.

But Brown’s charges could also lead to a backlash of sympathy for the Democratic front-runner, one that Clinton immediately sought to exploit by accusing Brown of questioning Hillary Clinton’s integrity.

For most of the hour-long program, the debate--hampered by a format that included a panel of five questioners and sharply limited time for discussion of any issue--produced little beyond a recitation of already familiar positions. The three candidates already have participated in 11 debates in the last two months.

Then came Brown’s fireworks, opened after one of the panel members asked the former California governor if he thought Clinton was “electable” in November. “I think he has a big electability problem,” Brown said. “He is funneling money to his wife’s law firm.”

Brown cited as proof an article in Sunday’s Washington Post. The article described the influence long held by the Rose Law Firm and noted that Clinton’s opponents have charged conflict of interest between his wife’s role there and the firm’s representation of clients before state agencies, but it did not directly allege any impropriety on the part of either Clinton.

The firm, which is one of only three major law firms in the state, has done work for state agencies for more than half a century, and the state has been one of its largest clients.

According to Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton has avoided representing clients directly before the state. Moreover, he said, since she became a partner at the firm, she has given up the portion of her salary that is attributable to money earned from the state. The Clintons in the past had not disclosed when Hillary Clinton began that practice.

In at least one case noted by the Post, however, Hillary Clinton represented before a state agency a real estate partnership in which the couple had invested. The extent of her representation of the partnership remains in dispute.

Brown, the son of a former governor, insisted that any work with the state by a firm employing Hillary Clinton would constitute a conflict of interest, regardless of whether she benefited directly. “Any law firm that could get a member of the family of the chief executive would give their eye teeth for that,” Brown said. “I know how this thing works.”

“Jerry comes here with his family wealth and his $1,500 suit and makes a lying accusation about my wife,” Clinton said. “My wife is a fine person who has not done anything unethical.”

What the Democrats need in November, he added, is a candidate “tough enough to stand up to the kind of garbage” that comes up in campaigns.

Earlier in the day, Brown campaigned in Michigan, where he has devoted most of his efforts. Tsongas and Clinton toured Chicago and all three marched in a St. Patrick’s Day parade and visited black churches.

Clinton received his warmest greeting at the Union Mission Church of God in Christ, near the city’s notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects, where pastor Marvin Alexander praised the candidate and admonished his congregation to ignore stories about the candidate’s personal life.

“Listen, sisters and brothers,” he said. “God has not made another perfect man since he made Adam, and Adam sinned.”

“If you’re looking for perfection, stop, because the Bible says all have sinned.”

The message brought a broad grin and nod of assent from Clinton. “When your pastor said that I was not perfect, I started to stand up and say, ‘Amen,’ and lead a shout,” he said when he rose to speak. Church, he added, “is not a place for saints but for sinners, a place not for the strong but for the weak, a place not for where we look down at others but look up at God and look for help.”

As he preached a mixture of Scriptures and stump speech, Clinton quoted John F. Kennedy, as he did repeatedly through the day, reminding the congregation that “on Earth, God’s work must be our own.”

“I have seen the miracles of America, and they make the failures of our country all the more painful,” he said, speaking of schools he had visited and inner-city neighborhoods he had seen where people had succeeded in making their lives better. “You ought to have more opportunity, but we need more responsibility,” he said, bringing murmured “amens” from the congregation.

“All of us have to have the courage to change,” he said, promising that if, in the next election, the country could move beyond the divisions of race and class and abandon the “failed policies of the 1980s,” America could fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah and “fly with wings as eagles . . . run and not grow weary.”

* CLINTON LOOKS STRONG: Governor appears to be the favorite going into the Illinois and Michigan primaries. A16