California Insurance Commissioner

Primary: Jun 2, 2026

Ben Allen is currently my state senator, I’ve met him a few times. I really respect him and trust him.

Ben Allen.

Let me put some more nuance here since it's an awkward office to run for:

Insurance Commissioner is primarily responsible for regulating how insurance companies provide rates, who they cover, and what they do with their float.

For you and me, who probably aren't homeowners, and probably don't have the capacity to buy property insurance anytime soon, the first two pieces aren't very important. Sure, they're good to watch for, but they don't affect us for the most part.

None of the candidates running for this office have explicitly mentioned or highlighted the third part.

The third part of the office is the most important for regulating the market as a whole. What insurance companies do with our premiums, by investing it across several low-to-high risk funds, can have significant implications for the market's health. This impact is multiplied in the private credit market.

Insurance Commissioners can require that insurance investment funds publicly label their investments and the associated risk behind them, placing a key check on private investors playing with the state's insurance market and threatening to destabilize the lives of claimants should a massive disaster happen again like the Palisades fire.

By requiring public disclosures of what insurance investors do with the money and certifying public credit risk assessments, the insurance commissioner would be utilizing the full power of their office to manipulate the market for good and protect California's insurance market from the impending credit crisis facing the nation as a whole. Once one of the candidates marks that as a priority, I'll be inclined to switch support to them or further support them.

Notably however, Ben safely advocates for insurance to not be a huge behemoth taking advantage of climate prone areas while also keeping these companies stable enough to provide coverage at reasonable rates.

Jane’s platform highlights a divestment from private investments by insurance companies, eliminating their float and making the rich even more angry and fueling them for republican opposition. A public model doesn’t work for California not only because we don’t have public health insurance yet, which should be first, but it also threatens to actually trickle down from mom and pop landlords bearing the brunt of a rise in cost from the public option, making it more unaffordable for renters to be in California. For those reasons, I’d go with the safer option in Ben Allen.

We recommend voting for Ben Allen for Insurance Commissioner. Allen has the experience, knowledge, and track record to fix California's broken insurance market.

In the June primary we endorsed Patrick Wolff while mentioning that Ben Allen was also a good choice. Unfortunately, Patrick Wolff lost, so the November election is a head-to-head matchup between Ben Allen and Jane Kim. We strongly recommend Ben Allen and strongly oppose Jane Kim.

California's insurance market is broken. Insurance companies are leaving the state, the state-run 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. Only one candidate in this race does.

Why vote for Ben Allen?

Allen has spent over a decade working on insurance, climate, and consumer protection. As a State Senator, he represents the communities devastated by the Palisades Fire, where he spent the aftermath helping hundreds of constituents fight for their insurance claims, an experience he calls "a front-row seat to our broken insurance system." He watched the FAIR Plan nearly collapse under $4 billion in losses (https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/02/11/fair-plan-payment-property-insurance/) from the LA fires, with the costs spread to policyholders statewide through a $1 billion emergency assessment (https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0250-insurers/0300-insurers/0200-bulletins/bulletin-notices-commiss-opinion/upload/Bulletin-2025-4-Updated-Guidance-regarding-Insurer-Recoupment-Procedures-in-Response-to-Assessment-by-the-FAIR-Plan.pdf), and he drew the right lesson: letting the FAIR Plan grow unchecked creates systemic risk for everyone.

"Standing amid smoke, ashes, and uncertainty, I saw what failure looks like."

Ben Allen, California State Senator

Allen didn't wait for tragedy before acting, though. In 2024, a year before the Palisades Fire, he authored Proposition 4 (https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_4,_Climate_Bond_(2024)) to authorize a $10 billion bond for wildfire risk reduction and water infrastructure that voters approved. While other candidates talk in vague terms about affordability while dodging questions about their relevant experience (https://x.com/ZavalaA/status/2081551393408901530), Allen has already put $10 billion to work reducing the risk that makes insurance expensive in the first place.

His plan for the office pairs regulatory flexibility with hard accountability: insurers get more flexibility to price risk accurately so taxpayers won't be forced to bail them out after a disaster, and in exchange they must actually write and renew policies in California. He also wants an independent consumer advocate inside the Department of Insurance, public dashboards tracking insurer behavior, and a ban on Commissioners working for the insurance industry after leaving office. You can read his full plans in his answers to our questionnaire (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/questionnaires/june-2026/benjamin-allen/).

Why not Jane Kim?

Jane Kim is a career politician who went from being a San Francisco Supervisor, to losing her run for State Senate, to running a socialist political party (the Working Families Party), and now wants a state takeover of disaster insurance. She has no insurance experience, no insurance license, and no financial services background. She's running on a plan called "Disaster Insurance for All" (https://www.janekim.org/): a government-run program that would replace private disaster coverage. You'd pay a fee to the state, and the state would cover wildfires, earthquakes, and floods. Private insurers would have no reason to stick around. The next big wildfire or earthquake means either a massive taxpayer bailout or a wave of unpaid claims.

In theory, this could work, but it would depend on the state accurately pricing risk. The private market is in a crisis precisely because the state has not let insurers price risk accurately. Kim's plan would make that problem worse, not better.

Her plan reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what insurance is. Insurance works by pricing risk and spreading it across a big pool. Kim won't commit to pricing risk. When pressed on it, she told Washington Monthly (https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/07/13/jane-kim-california-home-insurance-crisis/): "I imagine we would look at both value and risk, but one of the goals is to make sure that [coverage] is affordable." This hedging worries economists. Holding rates down for affordability is precisely how you end up not charging for risk. When fire-prone homes don't pay what their risk actually costs, people who live in fire-safe cities like San Francisco pay more. Insurance prices are supposed to make people think twice about building in dangerous places. When that signal is weakened, more people will move to fire-prone areas, more homes will burn, and San Franciscans will pay even more to cover it.

In short, Jane Kim wants to end private disaster insurance and dump everyone into one state-run account that mis-prices the actual risks, then hope nothing bad ever happens.

We've already seen this movie in California. The FAIR Plan, the state's existing backup insurer, got hit with $4 billion in losses (https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/02/11/fair-plan-payment-property-insurance/) from the LA fires, ran out of money, and had to charge private insurers a $1 billion emergency fee (https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0250-insurers/0300-insurers/0200-bulletins/bulletin-notices-commiss-opinion/upload/Bulletin-2025-4-Updated-Guidance-regarding-Insurer-Recoupment-Procedures-in-Response-to-Assessment-by-the-FAIR-Plan.pdf) just to stay alive. That's with only 610,000 policies. Kim wants to put every California homeowner on a plan like this.

The models she points to aren't success stories either: New Zealand's earthquake insurer was overwhelmed after the 2011 Christchurch quake (https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/504862/class-action-launched-claiming-eqc-underpaid-christchurch-quake-victims), underpaid people for over a decade, and is now getting sued.

We are not alone in this read. The San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board endorsed Allen (https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/insurance-commissioner-california-allen-kim-22321376.php) under the headline "One candidate is ready to be California's insurance commissioner. The other would be a disaster." It called Kim "as rash as they come," said her platform is "politically seductive" but "a recipe for disaster," and pointed to her 2016 Prop C, the inclusionary housing rates that supervisors had to cut three times because projects stopped penciling out. Its conclusion: "If Prop C is an example of how Kim would operate as insurance commissioner, voters should run screaming."

This race is a choice between a legislator who has spent a decade on the problem and a candidate whose plan would make it dramatically worse. Ben Allen understands how insurance works and has already done more than anyone in this race to fix it. That's why he has our endorsement.

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

Huge supporter of Jane!! WFP champion

Bernie Sanders endorsed. Statewide office candidate.

Working Families Party is endorsing Jane Kim in her run for California Insurance Commissioner. Kim will harness the power of the office, too often beholden to the insurance industry, to actually serve residents by ensuring that everyone can access affordable coverage. Jane Kim was until recently the State Director of California Working Families Party, where she led the recruitment, training, and election support for scores of elected officials across the state. These Working Families Party-aligned elected officials are serving on school boards, city councils, and in the state legislature, advocating for affordable housing, accessible healthcare, adequately funded public schools, and other issues squeezing working families. She also led the Party’s recent work on Proposition 50, overcoming billionaire spending resulting in a people-led victory.

Jane Kim, the former S.F. supervisor and California director of the Working Families Party, is a force in city and state progressive politics. And though she admits she doesn’t have a background in the insurance industry, that’s actually a plus (https://sfstandard.com/2026/04/20/jane-kim-insurance-commissioner/): we believe California’s Insurance Commissioner needs to take on the big insurers, not cozy up to them. 

The state Insurance Commissioner regulates the nation’s largest property and casualty insurance market, approves premium rate increases, and regulates life, health, and workers’ comp insurance. Homeowners insurance is entwined with real estate and mortgage lending, and health insurance is entwined with, well, health. So Insurance Commissioner is a hugely important job, which is why it matters to have a commissioner who shares our values and prioritizes the public over profits. 

Insurers have been going wild in California, driving up the cost of living by canceling homeowners’ policies, abandoning whole areas of the state, increasing premiums to unimaginable highs, and denying claims. After the devastating fires in Los Angeles, voters say they’re fed up, and most of the candidates are at least giving lip service to reform.  Jane Kim is proposing to create a public insurer for natural disasters, much like the system in New Zealand (https://www.consorsegurosdigital.com/en/numero-21/sumario/contributions/new-zealands-natural-hazards-insurance-scheme-is-based-on-lessons-of-the-past/), and she promises to use the office to rein in the powerful industry and develop new, functional alternatives. Right on, Jane!

Vote Jane Kim for Insurance Commissioner!

Source (https://www.theleaguesf.org/blog#InsuranceCommissioner)

Endorsed. Civil rights attorney; banned employment discrimination against formerly incarcerated; opposes ICE collaboration.

DSA San Diego endorsement

The insurance industry has put profits over people for far too long. The role of the California Insurance Commissioner is to lead the nation's largest state consumer protection agency to regulate the insurance industry. We've always known Jane Kim to be a fighter who knows how to get things done for working families in San Francisco. As Insurance Commissioner, we know that she can lead where others have failed because of the lack of political will. She has a plan to reimagine a better industry that actually serves everyday Californians, including natural disaster insurance for all, ending pricing discrimination practices for auto insurance, and ensuring fast and fair claims.

Source (https://www.milkclub.org/endorsements)

Kim’s platform is in direct alignment with our core mission, and she articulated a deep understanding of what is broken in California’s insurance landscape. Her policy proposals are concrete, consumer-centered, and timely. As climate change accelerates and other challenges impact the availability and affordability of car, renters’, and homeowners insurance across the state, California needs an Insurance Commissioner with the vision and will to implement innovative policies and advocate for consumers.

She has had a long relationship with SFWPC and has made herself available when we reached out about issues and concerns we had with her past platforming of a known abuser after his abuse was made public (https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-s-Jane-Kim-apologizes-for-bringing-man-16543560.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2ZjaHJvbmljbGUuY29tL3NmL2FydGljbGUvUy1GLXMtSmFuZS1LaW0tYXBvbG9naXplcy1mb3ItYnJpbmdpbmctbWFuLTE2NTQzNTYwLnBocA%3D%3D&time=MTc3NDQ2MjMzNjYxNg%3D%3D&rid=MTcwNzM4YmItZmQ3YS00M2FhLThjNGItZjdiMzg5N2NlODhk&sharecount=Mg%3D%3D). We have had productive dialogues, and she has demonstrated a public understanding of past harms, a willingness to engage with us to correct harmful behaviors and cultures that perpetuate abuse, and a commitment to uphold SFWPC’s standards for safety and equity in political spaces. That accountability and subsequent action matter to us. We look forward to working with her to advance our shared work and protect the economic interests of all San Franciscans and Californians.

Source (https://sfwpc.org/pac-recommendations-for-june-2026-election/)

Folks who pay attention to this wonky position and care about climate strongly support Ben Allen. Patrick Wolff would be a close second for me. This role needs a practical thinker who understands the complexities of the insurance market and the impacts that climate change (e.g., wildfires and more) are already having on our home state.

Our Revolution is proud to endorse Jane Kim for California Insurance Commissioner — a proven progressive leader who has spent her career fighting for working families and taking on corporate power. She built a strong record advancing consumer protections, environmental justice, healthcare access, and economic fairness — consistently standing with grassroots movements over corporate lobbyists.

Because of Jane Kim’s progressive history and innovative ideas for making sure all types of insurance are accessible to everyone LA Forward recommends her for the office of California Insurance Commissioner. Kim served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2011-2019 and currently works as the California Director of the Working Families Party. She also worked as a regional political director for Bernie Sanders during his 2020 presidential campaign. Some of Kim’s signature achievements during her tenure on the Board of Supervisors include, fighting for free community college tuition, brokering deals for an increase in affordable housing units and eviction protections for tenants.

Her campaign centers on holding insurers accountable while expanding access for Californians priced out of coverage. Jane has proposed a natural disaster insurance policy for every Californian. Under the Natural Disaster Insurance for All model, homeowners would continue to purchase private coverage for routine claims such as theft or water damage, while paying a government-administered fee tied to income and property value to fund disaster protection. Other countries including New Zealand have similar models. She sees this as an option to move people away from the FAIR Plan which is administered by the state and considered the “insurer of last resort” for homeowners who, through no fault of their own, cannot acquire coverage on the open market. She has also advanced the idea of a state affordable auto insurance option open to everyone. Kim has stated she will not accept campaign contributions from insurance companies, their executives, or affiliated political action committees.

Kim has won the endorsements of the Working Families Party, Our Revolution, SEIU, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna and many more.

Will be voting for Jane Kim. She is endorsed by Bernie Sanders, need I say more??

The office of the Insurance Commissioner has in the past been a decent advocate for consumers; when John Garamendi had the job, he actually held some insurers to account and helped people fight for benefits. Not so under incumbent Ricardo Lara. The insurance industry in this state is out of control, denying or delaying claims in catastrophic fires, raising rates for car insurance, threatening to leave the state … and Lara has done little to nothing about it.

Jane Kim, former SF supervisor and director at the Working Families Party, is running a grassroots campaign to try to change that. She’s talking about a public option for car insurance, disaster insurance for everyone, and mandatory deadlines on claims. Nobody else in the race is offering that consumer-based approach. We’re backing Kim.

Source (https://www.sfbg.com/2026/05/06/endorsements-for-the-june-2-election/)

The most important office in California that you may not have heard of is Insurance Commissioner. Historically this seat has been held by those who have catered hand over fist to the insurance industry. Jane is not one of those candidates. From making City College free to authoring the “Tenant Protections 2.0” package of 2015, Jane has a long track record of using government to work for working people. We have no doubt that Jane will bring that same tenacity to the role of Insurance Commissioner.

Source (https://sftu.org/endorsements)

Ben Allen offers the most realistic fix for California's insurance crisis — the core problem is that people can't get policies at all, and his plan targets that directly: speeding rate-hike review from a year-plus down to months to rebuild insurer confidence and get carriers writing in California again, using powers the commissioner actually holds.

He attacks the root cause, not just the price — as author of Prop 4, the voter-approved $10B climate-resiliency bond, he's focused on reducing the underlying wildfire risk driving insurers out, with home-hardening grants for high-risk areas and more claims handlers during emergencies. The Mercury News endorsed him as the one candidate who grasps the over-regulate/under-regulate tightrope.

His approach is more incremental than bold — and that's the point. Critics, including Jane Kim's supporters, argue a state-run insurance fund or public option would do more. That's a fair preference, and Kim essentially tied Allen for grassroots support. But those structural fixes largely require new legislation and funding the commissioner can't deliver alone; Allen's bet is on what the office can actually execute now. If you want achievable over ambitious, he's the choice.

Insurance is a slow-burning disaster in California. The core of the problem is 1) climate change increasing the rate of significant property damage 2) homeowners in fire-prone areas lobbying for rules that prevent insurance companies from accurately pricing climate risk 3) insurance companies responding to this rationally by refusing to issue new policies. As the Palisades wildfires showed, disasters cause large, concentrated losses, with large numbers of people on the state’s special high-risk insurance plan because they could not buy conventional insurance. The plan is funded by a tax on all insurance companies operating in the state, and as such is effectively a subsidy for people living in risky areas – what my favorite socialist writer calls “ bad climate socialism.” This is also what would happen if the state took over the entire home insurance market (as one candidate is proposing) without managing retreat from climate risks. A better insurance market in California probably requires people to leave risky places to live and for insurance prices there to reflect the actual likelihood of disaster. Ben Allen has the most credible plan for encouraging this, including a willingness to let insurers accurately price risk, which allows them to come back to the state. This is unpopular in disaster-prone areas but ought to be popular for the rest of us. I want to have renters’ insurance again.

Endorsed by Bernie Sanders

Assyrian Democrats of the Bay Area and Democrats for Palestinian Rights – Bay Area proudly co-endorse Jane Kim for California State Insurance Commissioner.

Why We Support Jane — priorities when elected include:

• Freezing your rates when you file a claim
• Ensuring claims are fast and fair
• No investments to countries committing genocide
• Medicare for kids
• Expanding non-profit, low-cost auto insurance for all
• Requiring companies to pay interest on delayed claims
• Natural disaster insurance for all
• No fossil fuel investments
• Investing in preventative measures
• Cap corporate profits and CEO pay

• indicates least bad option

California voters are facing a number of significant races in the general election ranging from the high-profile contest to fill an open governor’s seat to an initiative that could limit local tax increases. Yet the race for the little-followed position of insurance commissioner could have the most reverberations. Quite simply, the insurance industry (https://www.wsj.com/articles/insurance-companies-are-quietly-fleeing-california-proposition-103-natural-disaster-state-farm-market-competition-ricardo-lara-commissioner-db0af00) — the lifeblood of the state’s real estate market — is facing an existential threat.

We don’t issue such warnings lightly. As many beleaguered homeowners know, California’s property insurance market (https://judiciary.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/california-fires-and-consequences-overregulation) has been in a free fall since 2023, after State Farm — the dominant home-insurance underwriter — stopped writing new policies. Other companies pulled back. The proximate cause: Costly wildfires threatened their financial stability. The fundamental cause: California’s system of insurance price controls had impeded their ability to adjust rates to meet risk.

So insurers started pulling back, leaving record numbers of Californians scrambling for insurance, underinsured or dependent on the state-created FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) Plan (https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-fair-plan-insurers-incentivized-policies-last-resort/). As a result, that safety-net insurer approached the financial brink. Although slow to react, Commissioner Ricardo Lara created the Sustainable Insurance Strategy — a series of significant reforms that have stabilized the market and bolstered the FAIR Plan. Insurance is still too expensive, but California’s market is recovering.

That brings us to the current election. It pits state Sen. Ben Allen (https://www.benallenca.com/), D-Santa Monica, against Jane Kim, the former San Francisco supervisor and one-time state director of the far-left Working Families Party. She received the most votes in the primary in a crowded field. We had endorsed Patrick Wolff, an insurance expert, but were impressed with Allen, also. He brings a wealth of legislative experience to the table, and is thoughtful, detail-oriented and not particularly ideological — important traits for an office that oversees a large humdrum bureaucracy.

Most important: Allen is committed to continuing the Lara-era reforms (https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/180-climate-change/sustainable-insurance-strategy.Cfm) that are steadily restoring the health of the property insurance industry. He’s sure to back some initiatives regarding, say, climate change, that give us heartburn, but he understands insurance markets and is committed to generating competition and staying the reform course. That is the key to restoring the industry’s health and assuring that consumers can find affordable policies.
Enter Kim. She has no real insurance background. She is an ideologue who promises to socialize a large portion of the home-insurance industry. Not only will that put taxpayers on the hook for liabilities now assumed by private companies, it will turn over matters to government agencies. We’re not surmising here — Kim proudly boasts (https://jacobin.com/2026/02/natural-disaster-insurance-california-wildfires) about her plans. Anyone who has watched California’s government operate over the last few decades knows that any such “disaster insurance for all” system will be bureaucratic, wasteful and plagued with scandal.

As we argued in our primary editorial (https://www.ocregister.com/2026/04/26/endorsement-patrick-wolff-for-state-insurance-commissioner/), “She wants a publicly run single-payer system, which would destroy California’s market. Even if she’s unable to implement these long-timeframe proposals, she would trigger a further exodus of insurers with her trial-lawyer/consumer-activist approach to insurance regulation.” If you think disaster insurance is problematic now, just wait until government runs it. 

We understand homeowners’ frustration with insurance companies, but the answer is not to turn the system over to bureaucrats, activists and unions. Your ability to find affordable, quality insurance may depend on this election outcome.

We strongly urge a vote for Ben Allen.

Source (https://www.dailynews.com/2026/08/16/endorsement-ben-allen-for-insurance-commissioner/)

There is no greater looming threat to affordability in California than its home insurance crisis.

Housing prices in the state have played the central role in its loss of residents to other states for two decades, but insurance costs have not. Strict consumer protections since the late 1980s kept premiums down to among the lowest in the country.

But increasingly devastating wildfires are unraveling one of the last bargains Californians have enjoyed.

Over the last four years, carriers have retreated from the state entirely or have paused writing new policies. Rates have risen sharply across the Bay Area.

Meanwhile, homeowners throughout the region — from rural Sonoma County to suburban San Jose — have been pushed into the FAIR Plan, the state’s high-risk pool offering expensive, limited coverage. Disconcertingly yet unsurprisingly, the prospect of rising premiums is sinking home sales.

With the Nov. 3 election approaching, California voters must understand: When they choose between the two Democrats — Ben Allen and Jane Kim (https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/07/15/who-are-democrats-kim-and-allen-californias-insurance-commissioner-candidates/) — running to replace termed-out Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, the viability of homeownership is on the ballot.

Ben Allen is our choice to navigate California through this unprecedented crisis.

Here is how we reached our decision in favor of the 48-year-old state senator who has represented western Los Angeles County, including areas destroyed by the Palisades Fire, for 12 years.

Since Californians passed Proposition 103 in 1988, the insurance commissioner has had powerful independent authority over the country’s largest property and casualty insurance market. Insurers, for example, must receive approval from the commissioner’s Department of Insurance before they can raise rates.

However, as powerful as this office is, many underlying causes of today’s metastasizing crisis — climate change, land-use policies, construction costs and fire suppression tactics — lie outside of the commissioner’s direct control.

Allen — who placed second in the June primary with 19% of the vote — understands the limits of this office. In fact, he is the only candidate who consistently frames the problem as a system-wide challenge necessitating that insurers, lawmakers, developers, homeowners and polluters align.

Treat the causes

As Allen explained to our editorial board (https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/05/22/ben-allen-california-insurance-commissioner-candidate-answers-bay-area-news-groups-primary-questionnaire/), the next commissioner must work hand in glove with the state Legislature on policies that will materially lower risks. That means updating our building codes to require more fire-resistant materials; revising our land-use policies to minimize building in predictably flammable areas at the edge of wildlands; and disincentivizing oil companies from further exacerbating climate change.

These changes are the preconditions for lower rates.

Allen’s advantages are twofold:

He is humble enough to acknowledge the insurance commissioner cannot solve this problem by fiat, and he has the legislative record and relationships in Sacramento that will be necessary to craft broader solutions.

Further, unlike Kim, Allen has already been working on these issues in the Legislature. He co-authored Prop. 4, a $10 billion statewide wildfire prevention and climate resilience bond approved by voters in 2024.

Doing this job right requires navigating state politics, negotiating with competing economic interest groups and managing a 1,400-person bureaucracy that oversees more than 1,600 insurance companies. Ben Allen convinced us he could operate inside this maze. His opponent, Jane Kim, did not.

Unaffordable experiment

Kim recognizes, correctly, that the private insurance market is struggling to absorb climate risk.

But the 49-year-old former San Francisco County supervisor’s solution — a single-payer-style public disaster insurance program — is poorly defined and presents an enormous risk for a state struggling with chronic deficits.

Kim — who won 27% of the vote, the most among the 11 candidates in the June primary — points to New Zealand as a proof of concept. But we already have an example of a state-run insurance program here in the U.S. The National Flood Insurance Program is in constant financial distress as its premiums routinely fail to cover the escalating costs created by ever-larger, disastrous floods.

Californians cannot afford Kim’s experiment.

Kim has raised about $1 million for her campaign. Her top donors include unions for teachers, nurses and service workers. An independent campaign committee sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce has spent $1.5 million to oppose her.

Allen’s campaign has raised about $1.6 million, with top donors including a mix of business and labor interests. He has also won the endorsement of the California Democratic Party.

Whoever wins has no easy options.

Over-regulating could scare more insurers away; under-regulating could inflate prices even more. Meanwhile, the conditions for deadlier and more destructive wildfires at the intersection of nature and our cities keep growing. And there is no end in sight.

There is only one candidate who grasps the complexity of this crisis and has the legislative experience to address it.

That is Ben Allen.

Source (https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/26/endorsement-elect-ben-allen-californias-next-insurance-commissioner-2/)

Not good option here. Only 2 D’s advanced. But ALLEN, reportedly is better than far-left opponent, JANE KIM.

Ben Allen is recommended, not endorsed, because he is not Republican. However, the committee agreed that he is the better choice out of the two. Only Democrats are running; we recommend Ben Allen

The property and casualty insurance industry reported record-breaking profits of $169 billion last year—a 90% increase over 2023 and a staggering 333% increase over 2022. Meanwhile, everyday Californians are seeing their premiums rise, while hundreds of thousands of policies are being cancelled. Insurance is supposed to reduce our collective risk and protect our biggest investments. For most working families, that means our homes, our cars and our pension plans. In practice, the insurance industry plays a major role in determining who in California gets to build wealth—and at what cost. But instead of focusing on providing a critical service, the industry has made maximizing profit its primary mission.

Jane is a real fighter for the average working families’ needs. This position controls whether you can keep your home or leeo driving your car. If your insurance gets canceled because your insurance company's huge profits dip, your bank can call in your mortgage. There are so many parts of our lives controlled by insurance companies including healthcare, homeownership, & safe driving. She's the real deal and will advocate for consumers. Ben Allen is my number 2 choice and would likely be satisfactory too.

Jane Kim is seeking to make history in the race for California insurance commissioner. Kim previously became San Francisco’s first Korean American elected official. Her current statewide campaign places her in position to become one of the first Korean Americans elected by voters across California to a statewide office. She finished first in the June primary with 27.4% of the vote in an 11-candidate field. State Sen. Ben Allen finished second, trailing Kim by roughly eight percentage points, according to the original report. Kim’s campaign is centered on California’s growing insurance crisis, including rising premiums, cancellations and difficulty obtaining coverage in areas exposed to wildfire and other disasters. Among the proposals highlighted in the original article is a requirement that at least 70% of auto-insurance premium revenue and 65% of homeowners-insurance premium revenue be directed toward claims and related benefits. Excessive profits, under her proposal, would either be returned to consumers or directed toward disaster-prevention efforts. Her most distinctive proposal is the creation of a public “Disaster Insurance for All” program covering losses from wildfires, floods and earthquakes. Her official candidate statement confirms that proposal and her pledge to refuse insurance-industry money. Kim has also proposed expanding California’s existing low-income auto-insurance program into a broader affordable public option, restricting premium increases triggered by claims, strengthening penalties against insurers that delay payments and requiring greater public disclosure of how premiums are used. A civil-rights attorney, organizer and consumer advocate, Kim argues that the insurance commissioner should serve as a consumer watchdog rather than an ally of the industry.

Jane Kim, the former San Francisco supervisor and former executive director of the California Working Families Party, has a long history as a prominent figure on the California left. She won office in San Francisco against the Democratic machine, served as California political director for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, and has spent years organizing around working-class economic issues. Kim has clearly distinguished herself as the progressive in this race. She is running on aggressively regulating the insurance industry and creating a public Disaster Insurance for All program. She is endorsed by Bernie Sanders and has significant support from organized labor, including major teachers’ unions, nurses, and other unions. We recommend Jane Kim for California Insurance Commissioner.