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In 1994, a Microsoft employee e-mailed company chairman Bill Gates to tell him about her husband’s campaign for the Washington state legislature. Stu Jacobson is a liberal Democrat, wrote wife Sandra. He favors abortion rights, wants stricter gun control, and supports the state’s 1993 health-reform law (a mini version of ClintonCare). “It sounds like we agree on many things,” replied Gates. “I am willing to endorse Stu.”

Jacobson was clobbered on Election Day and quickly forgotten. But Gates’s endorsement worried Republicans in the Evergreen State; they were starting to detect a disturbing pattern. One year earlier, Gates had given $80,000 to help defeat a tax-limitation initiative sponsored by conservatives. In interviews, he would occasionally identify himself as a Democrat. He golfed with President Clinton. In 1996, he gave money to Democrat Gary Locke’s gubernatorial campaign, and in 1997 he spent $35,000 backing a gun-control measure. Microsoft’s corporate-donor list has long included left-wing groups such as the ACLU, the NAACP, and NOW.

In recent months, however, Gates appears to have started having second thoughts. The Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Microsoft, charging it with predatory monopoly practices, has left Gates in a deep funk. Huge amounts of his personal time and his company’s resources have gone to fending off Clinton-administration lawyers instead of developing new products. Gates wants nothing more than to have the federal government leave him alone and permit Microsoft the simple “freedom to innovate”-a catch phrase spoken by virtually every company employee involved in the case. “The lawsuit has forced him to think about politics more,” says one Microsoft insider. “He’s like the liberal who was ‘mugged by reality,’” says another. It appears that the richest man in the world is wondering whether now it’s time to join the Republicans.

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