Illinois House Impeaches Governor

“I am confident that at the end of the day I will be properly exonerated,” Mr. Blagojevich, 52, said at a Chicago news conference in which he cast himself as something of a martyred populist.

The State House of Representatives deliberated less than an hour and a half before voting 114 to 1 to impeach Mr. Blagojevich, making him the first Illinois chief executive to face such a trial. On Thursday, a 21-member bipartisan House committee unanimously recommended the same, citing an abuse of power in the ordinary work of government.

In the Senate, where the trial is expected to begin Jan. 26, lawmakers will face the difficult task of separating the political theatrics of the governor’s problems from the legal accusations against him, which have yet to be proved in court or even brought in a formal indictment.

It is unclear whether the case against Mr. Blagojevich, a two-term Democrat, will be grounds enough for senators to convict him. The State Constitution does not define a standard for an impeachable offense. For a governor to be removed from office, two-thirds of the Senate — 40 of the 59 members — must vote to convict him.

“This is an extraordinary step to take when you’re doing something like impeachment, which is in effect reversing the will of the voters in the last election,” said Senator Kwame Raoul, a Chicago Democrat. “You want to set the bar high.”

Still, no one — not even Representative Milton Patterson, a Democrat who voted against impeachment, saying he needed more information — defended Mr. Blagojevich on the House floor. The governor was roundly denounced on various fronts, including for his arrest last month on federal corruption charges involving, among other things, scheming to sell the United States Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

“This governor has breached the public trust,” said Representative Barbara Flynn Currie, a Democrat, who was chairwoman of the impeachment committee.

Several hours after the vote, Mr. Blagojevich, a two-term Democrat, called the news conference at his downtown Chicago office. He denounced the state legislature, quoted inspirational poetry and recited a litany of accomplishments.

He said that the impeachment was a “foregone conclusion,” and suggested that lawmakers were less concerned with the criminal allegations against him than with his policies — all driven, he said, by the Golden Rule — of helping children get health care, providing cheaper medicines from Canada to those in need, pressing for property tax relief and allowing women to get mammograms.

To promote those accomplishments, he brought to stand beside him a dozen Illinois residents who he said had benefited from his policies. They included a man in a wheelchair wearing a neck brace and two young children who played on the floor throughout his remarks.

“Is that an impeachable offense?” he asked repeatedly, after describing ways he had helped individuals.

Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn later said Mr. Blagojevich had sidestepped the real point.

“The governor did not address the central issue, which is the abuse of power,” Mr. Quinn said. “That is really the essence of the charges against him and he’ll have to address them in the Illinois Senate.”

Before the impeachment vote, legislators — who had been called back to Springfield for a special session — had spent the morning discussing the merits of their case against Mr. Blagojevich. Because he has not been convicted of a crime, the committee that recommended impeachment cut a broad swath, making its case on what members called a pattern of the abuse of power in day-to-day government operations.