In addition to executing the normal functions of the California attorney general, Rob Bonta has earned a place in my heart for bringing the hammer on reactionary cities that don’t want to comply with state housing laws, such as the efficiently run “city” of Huntington Beach and the checks notes cougar habitat known as Woodside. Four more years.

Shirley Weber is the incumbent; she’s done her job and ensured we actually get to vote, and she’s by-the-book enough that she told Gavin Newsom to kick rocks when he screwed up his election paperwork and tried to correct it after a deadline. Two big points in her favor, here’s to four more years.

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.