Not long after the vote, Mr. Blagojevich appeared outside his home on the North Side of Chicago. “I’m not looking for any pity,” he told a large crowd of reporters, friendly neighbors and at least one heckler. “I’ll be just fine.”

The governor had skipped the first three days of the trial in favor of visiting New York to make his case to the public, on a tour of national news organizations, that the process was being unfair to him. He denounced Senate rules that would not permit him to call witnesses who, it was determined, might compromise the federal criminal investigation being conducted against him.

But he flew here Thursday morning to make a last-minute plea before the senators. At some points in his speech, he struck the tone of a beggar asking for compassion and acquittal. At others, he was like a showman, proud and defiant.

Image Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich gave a closing statements in his impeachment trial on Thursday. Credit... Jonathan Kirshner/European Pressphoto Agency

“I’m appealing to your sense of fairness, your sense of responsibility,” the 52-year-old Mr. Blagojevich said. “You haven’t proved a crime  and you can’t, because it hasn’t happened. How can you throw a governor out of office with incomplete or insufficient evidence?”

He portrayed himself as a hard-working pragmatist who had often ruffled feathers in trying to get his work done but who, he insisted, had done nothing criminally or morally wrong.

In fact, “I did a lot of things that were mostly right,” he said.

“Impeachments are very rare,” he told the senators, “and they’re designed to be that way. That’s why I stand before you in a very unique and lonely place. You’re not supposed to just throw the will of the people out unless you show wrongdoing. You haven’t shown wrongdoing in this trial.”