Patrick WolffPatrick Wolff

We recommend voting for Patrick Wolff for Insurance Commissioner. This was a close call — Ben Allen is also an excellent candidate, and we'd be happy to see either in the general election.

California's insurance market is broken. Insurance companies are leaving the state, the FAIR Plan has blown up to 610,000+ policies (https://www.piawest.com/news-releases-and-bulletins/california-fair-plan-exposure-up-drastically-in-2025/) (up 154% since 2021), and homeowners in fire-prone areas are getting pushed into a bare-bones backup plan that just asked for a 36% rate hike (https://stateline.org/2025/10/24/californias-last-resort-property-insurer-seeks-rate-hike-ringing-national-alarm-bells/). The next Insurance Commissioner needs to understand what's actually broken and how to fix it.

Why Patrick Wolff?

Wolff is a financial analyst (https://patrickwolff.com/my-journey) who spent four years at Capital One building a home and auto insurance business and has spent 25 years analyzing insurance companies and markets. He's the only candidate in this race with a California insurance license (https://capitolweekly.net/meet-the-insurance-commissioner-candidates-patrick-wolff/). His diagnosis is precise: the Department of Insurance is "too lax regulating insurance companies' behavior, yet too strict controlling their market access." (https://calmatters.org/commentary/2026/01/insurers-california-competition-wildfires/)

"I believe the root of California's insurance crisis is we have been electing the wrong people to be Insurance Commissioner. We have been electing politicians who treat the role as a stepping stone rather than people with genuine expertise."
Patrick Wolff, Financial Analyst

His plan: cut the filing review timeline from 300 days to 60 days (https://www.perrknight.com/2023/07/10/navigate-the-california-rate-filing-environment/) (the standard in other states), strengthen the Sustainable Insurance Strategy, and publish a public "claims report card" (https://patrickwolff.com/my-plan) grading every insurer on how they handle claims — shown to consumers before they buy. He also identified a specific CDI regulatory failure: the 85% market-share rule that defined "fire-prone areas" by ZIP code, letting first-movers cherry-pick safe homes and leaving the riskiest ones behind. That level of diagnostic precision matters when you're regulating a market this complex.

Beyond property and casualty insurance, Wolff wants to merge the CDI's health insurance oversight with the Department of Managed Healthcare (currently split ~5%/95%, unique to California), and he's flagged the growing risk of private equity firms buying life insurance companies and leveraging their balance sheets. These aren't headline issues, but they're exactly what a technically skilled Commissioner should be spotting. San Franciscans know Wolff as the founder of Families for San Francisco (https://familiesforsanfrancisco.com/), the group that helped drive the 2022 school board recall (https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/voters-rally-oust-sf-school-board-members-in-tuesday-election/). In a field dominated by career politicians, Wolff is an actual practitioner with a credible plan to help fix California's insurance market.

Source (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-voter-guide-june-2026-election/#insurance-commissioner)

California is in an insurance crisis. We need an Insurance Commissioner with deep insurance and financial expertise to solve it—not someone who is part of the politics that created the problem. I am not a politician, and if elected this is the only elected office I will ever run for. From 2001–2005, I worked at a major bank where I built a home and auto insurance brokerage. Since 2005, I have worked as a financial analyst where, among other sectors, I analyzed insurance markets and companies. I know how insurance works inside out, and I am running to make our insurance system fair, efficient and transparent. The Insurance Commissioner must be a champion for customers and ensure the Department of Insurance is never under the infuence of insurance companies. My campaign does not accept any money from insurance companies or fossil fuel companies, and I will never accept gifts from corporate or special interests. Before I graduated from college in 1997, I was a champion chess player: I became a chess grandmaster and was a two-time U.S. Chess Champion. I know how to fight and win in tough, complex situations and I will bring those skills to the role of Insurance Commissioner. You can read my detailed plan to fix the insurance crisis at https://patrickwolf.com/my-plan. I would be honored to have your vote, and as your Insurance Commissioner, I will be a Wolf on your side. https://patrickwolf.com/

Wolff, a financial analyst, would develop an insurer report card rating claims handling, consider allowing auto insurers to track driver behavior for underwriting, and launch a public dashboard for life-insurance providers.

Wolff has sound policies, the most relevant experience (unlike all the other candidates, he has a CA insurance license), and seems to have pretty unanimous support from newspapers, as well as GrowSF. It’s important that he or Ben Allen win this race rather than a populist who would espouse policies that would further harm our insurance system. If the state refuses to let insurers raise rates, they respond by withdrawing from the market entirely.

He's clearly the person one would pick if the job were about qualifications, not politics.

He's clearly the person one would pick if the job were about qualifications, not politics.

He's clearly the person one would pick if the job were about qualifications, not politics

He's clearly the person one would pick if the job were about qualifications, not politics.