Illinois Senate expels Blagojevich

UPDATED:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. | The Illinois Senate on Thursday unanimously voted to oust Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich from office and bar him from ever holding a state post again, ignoring the Democrat who, near tears at one point, made a last-ditch appeal to prove that he had not tried to sell President Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder.

The chamber erupted into applause as the proceedings ended.

“We have this thing called impeachment, and it’s bleeping golden and we’ve used it the right way,” state Sen. James Meeks, Chicago Democrat, said during the debate, a mocking reference to the governor´s repeated use of foul language on FBI wiretaps.

Mr. Blagojevich, who had already boxed up his belongings at the governor’s executive mansion, was immediately removed from office and replaced minutes after the vote by Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn, 60, a fellow Democrat.

The governor’s ouster was the eighth in U.S. history and the first since 1988; no other Illinois governor had been impeached, let alone convicted in a Senate trial.

But the governor struck a defiant chord Thursday night, vowing to reporters outside his Chicago home to “keep fighting to clear my name.”

“I love the people of Illinois today more than I ever have before,” he said, before making a mordant joke about Chicago’s corrupt reputation, telling a boy in the crowd: “I love you, man. You know, this is Chicago. You can vote for me. You’re old enough.”

The Senate voted 59-0, with all 37 Democrats voting to remove Mr. Blagojevich for abuses of power.

Mr. Blagojevich skipped most of the impeachment tribunal but fought for his political life on Thursday when he appeared for the first time to defend himself. Charging that his Senate accusers had failed to prove that he broke the law, the governor said the case against him was politically motivated and had been flawed from the start.

“How can you throw a governor out of office on a criminal complaint and you haven’t been able to show or prove any criminal activity?” he asked from the Senate floor, his hair hanging into his eyes. “How can you throw a governor out of office who is clamoring and begging and pleading with you to give him a chance to bring witnesses in, to prove his innocence?”

Impeachment prosecutor David Ellis said the governor’s own words prove “a pattern of abuse of power.”

“Every decision this governor made was based on one of three criteria: his legal situation, his personal situation and his political situation,” Mr. Ellis said. “The people of this state deserve so much better. The governor should be removed from office.”

According to a 76-page FBI affidavit filed when he was arrested Dec. 9 on federal corruption charges, the 52-year-old Mr. Blagojevich engaged in a lengthy pattern of pay-to-play politics, trading campaign donations for political favors and trying to swap his power to pick Mr. Obama’s replacement for a Cabinet post, an ambassadorship or a high-paying job for himself and his wife.

On the FBI tapes, the governor is captured saying: “I’ve got this thing and it’s [expletive] golden” and “I want to make money,” according to the affidavit.

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