“I am a Republican and have traditionally voted that way,” Tony Schuler, an operations services manager at Microsoft with a Harvard M.B.A., said as he sat with his wife, Deanna, in their home above Lake Sammamish. But Mr. Schuler abhors what he sees as a new Republican habit of meddling in private affairs.  “The Schiavo case. Tapping people without a warrant. Whether or not people are gay,” he said. “Let people be free! It’s not government’s job to interfere with those things.”  In Bellevue, the professional is political. Rather than religion or culture, what unites the diverse population — a quarter of residents are foreign born — are the values of their workplaces: technological innovation, accuracy, efficiency.  And this year, one issue incenses them above all others: restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.  It is a matter of concern across the country, even across parties. But for many engineers and their ilk, restriction of stem cell research is what gay marriage is to conservative Christians, a phenomenon so counter to their basic values that they cannot vote for any candidate who supports it. After all, for Bellevue’s professionals, science is not only a means of creating wealth but also an idealistic pursuit, the most promising way they know of improving the human condition.  “For hundreds of years, science has had its own jurisprudence over the truth. It’s called peer review, and it works pretty well,” said Mr. Mattison, whose father had Alzheimer’s and his uncle Parkinson’s disease. “I’m outraged that a mere politician would interpret science for me.”  Voters like Mr. Mattison should be “natural constituents of Republicans,” said Robert E. Lang, a professor of urban planning at Virginia Tech who did research on Bellevue for a coming book on fast-growing “boomburbs,” which have city-size populations but suburb-like atmospheres. “They’re golfers,” Mr. Lang said. (Actually, Mr. Mattison prefers fly-fishing with private guides.)  Voters here also describe themselves as “obsessed” by the mounting national debt, which Mr. Mattison calls a “greater threat than terrorism” to the nation’s health.  Lara Peterson, a single mother who markets hardware for Microsoft, said, “It makes me insane to know that we had this huge budget surplus, and yet we’ve run up such debt in a six-year period.”  Ms. Peterson has adopted two daughters from China and is working on a third. As Gwen, her eldest, considered whether biting into an apple would dislodge her dangling front teeth, Ms. Peterson acknowledged that her fixation was personal.  China gains “so much power and control by carrying so much of our debt,” said Ms. Peterson, who described herself as a Democrat who often crosses party lines. If the United States one day resists repayment, she said, her girls will “never have an ability to have a relationship with their country.”  The politics of Microsoft employees is a subdrama unto itself. In the 2000 presidential election, many voted for President Bush, who was expected to curtail the Clinton administration’s antitrust case against the company. But now “the vibe is pretty Democratic,” Ms. Peterson said, and many employees who cursed the Democrats just a few years ago now plan on voting for the party.  Microsoft looms so large here, it influences the views even of those it does not employ. Several members of the First Congregational Church of Bellevue, speaking over home-pressed apple cider, said they were mortified by America’s role abroad in a way they had not been since the Vietnam War.  They do have one source of global pride, though: Bill and Melinda Gates’ work in Africa, which they see as a kind of alternative to official foreign policy and an example of how the United States should be helping the most troubled spots on earth.  When she travels abroad, said Mary Nassif, a school psychologist, “I may not take pride in being American, but I love saying I’m from Seattle.”  On a recent evening, immigrants gathered at the Crossroads Mall, where the food court’s attempt at internationalism — a pad Thai vendor here, some trays of tandoori there — seemed bland compared with its mix of Eritrean, Laotian and Somali patrons. These immigrants, many from conservative religious backgrounds, are among the Bellevue Republicans who feel the strongest connection to their party on social issues.  Take Pia and Bong Bernadino, who moved here in 2002 from New Jersey, boarding a train without jobs or even acquaintances awaiting them. Ms. Bernadino had been scheduled to meet a friend in the lobby of the World Trade Center at 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001; both she and the friend were late. Later, she taught at a kindergarten on Canal Street, where the students were so traumatized, they used their coloring time to draw babies falling out of the sky.  The Bernadinos moved west to escape their shock and to pursue Mr. Bernadino’s long-held dream of working for Microsoft. Now Mr. Bernadino spends his days there as a game developer and his evenings running a Web design business with his wife; they also plan to start an online store for novels signed by their authors. They are saving for a house and sending money home to family in the Philippines.  This year, as always, they are voting for candidates “with a strong family orientation,” Mr. Bernadino said. “We’re very devout Catholics. If someone is promoting pro-choice it may be questionable for us.”  Their other concern is diversity. “This is paradise, the land of opportunity,” Ms. Bernadino said of Bellevue.  Sheraz Malik, 29, is a Pakistani Muslim who came to the United States alone 10 years ago and became a citizen. Mr. Malik co-founded a long-distance Internet telephone service, which he used to court his fiancée, a Pakistani woman in Dubai. (It is not exactly an arranged marriage, he explained between bites of a hot dog; his parents shortlisted candidates, and after a year of online conversations, he chose one.)  Though Republican policies are generally favorable to his native country and his religious values, Mr. Malik said, he has drifted toward the Democrats since Sept. 11. “When the U.K. had the train blast, they didn’t go out and start bombing people,” he said. “They examined what they were doing wrong, both in terms of security and why a British-born Pakistani would do that.”  Soon he will cast an even more profound vote than the one in November, deciding whether to bring his bride here or move with her back to Pakistan. If he leaves, it will be partly because of post-Sept. 11 changes, like immigration registration measures and what he sees as a general erosion of due process.  “If you’re fighting for freedom outside the U.S. and then you suppress freedom at home,” he said, “then what are you fighting for in the first place?”  An article on Oct. 30 about a change in voting patterns in Bellevue, Wash., where 25 percent of residents are foreign born, misstated the languages in which ballots there are printed. Ballots are in English and Chinese — not in seven languages including Tagalog.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Liberal Republican Suburb Turns Furious With G.O.P. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
In Bellevue, Wash., long a stronghold of socially liberal Republicanism, voters are now accusing the party in power of overspending and overreaching.