WASHINGTON — When the Central American Free Trade Agreement bill reached the House floor yesterday, Microsoft was on one side of the legislation while the congressman from the software giant's back yard was on the other.

U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, a Bainbridge Island Democrat who opposes the treaty, has been in an awkward spot.

His district slices through Redmond, Microsoft's headquarters. The company has been one of CAFTA's chief proponents; founder Bill Gates came to Capitol Hill in April to lobby for it and met with the delegation.

Microsoft also gave Inslee $69,800 in campaign contributions in the 2003-04 election cycle — more than any other House member from Washington state, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign-watchdog group. In fact, Microsoft has been his top contributor since 2000.

But Inslee has another big supporter: labor, which has been fighting CAFTA. In the 2004 race, union PACs gave Inslee $123,749, or nearly half of his PAC money.

Inslee was the last Democrat from the state to announce his position on CAFTA. He waited until June 30.

Inslee last week wrote an opinion piece in The Seattle Times that didn't mention his contributors, but captured their split: "While CAFTA establishes a gold standard for protecting intellectual property created by local hi-tech companies, it also prevents us from moving forward in preserving labor and environmental standards."

Labor and environmental activists met with Inslee in April, but he remained undecided. On May 26, representatives of a coalition that includes the Community Alliance for Global Justice and the King County Labor Council urged ferry commuters to call Inslee to stop CAFTA. They continued their campaign the next month.

Inslee said in an interview that some Microsoft employees "recognize the difficulty of saying intellectual property is important enough to protect through a sanction, but peoples' ability to hold a job is not."

He acknowledged he had been pressed by Microsoft. But, he said, company officials "realized it's not based on interest but based on principle."

Staff reporter Alicia Mundy contributed to this report