Two Democrats lead California insurance commissioner primary

When California voters return to the polls in November, they could be choosing between two Democrats for insurance commissioner — a potential first in the history of the position. 

Progressive former San Francisco city supervisor Jane Kim and state Sen. Ben Allen of Santa Monica took the lead early Tuesday night. Republican insurance agent Stacy Korsgaden was in third place.

This will be just the 10th time California voters will select an insurance commissioner after passing Proposition 103 in 1988, the ballot measure that overhauled the state’s insurance regulations and made the position of commissioner an elected one. None of the nine prior contests have resulted in a Democratic lockout.

Current commissioner Ricardo Lara, also a Democrat, is termed out at the end of the year after steering the state through its worst insurance crisis in decades. Hundreds of thousands of Californians lost their home insurance and millions more saw their premiums rise thousands of dollars at a time — attracting attention to a typically sleepy race.

With a little over half of the vote in on Tuesday night, Kim, California director of the Working Families Party, led with 24%. Within San Francisco, she captured 37.3% of votes cast before Election Day. From her watch party in the Mission, Kim said she was grateful to voters for paying attention to an often-overlooked race and excited to see her message resonate with both urban and rural California.

Kim served on the San Francisco Board of Education before being elected to two terms on the Board of Supervisors, representing a stretch of the east side of the city from SoMa to Treasure Island. 

After being termed out in 2019, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders chose Kim as his Bay Area regional director in the 2020 election. Sanders later endorsed Kim’s run for insurance commissioner.

Kim told the Chronicle she was inspired to run for commissioner because she felt it was an underutilized position with the potential to play a powerful role in making California more affordable for working families. 

Her hallmark policy to create a single-payer disaster insurer for California drew skepticism from her fellow candidates and even from staunch consumer advocates who worried such a program would allow private insurers to skip out on the most expensive types of claims in California and leave the state saddled with the cost of multi-billion dollar wildfires. Kim argued something needed to be done to address private insurers’ unwillingness to offer coverage to large swaths of wildfire-prone areas.

“Insurers are already threatening to leave California,” she told the Chronicle upon announcing her campaign in January. “We should take their threat very seriously, and that means we have to explore public options.”

Though not directly in the Department of Insurance’s purview, Kim also promised to pioneer a plan for guaranteed healthcare for Californian children, what she termed Medicare for Kids. 

Her other proposed policies include expanding the number of investigations the department performs on insurance companies each year; expanding the state’s nonprofit auto insurance program; and creating a public tool to help homeowners determine whether they may be underinsured. 

Kim said she was unfazed by the prospect of facing a fellow Democrat in November.

“We are running on a singular policy platform about really transforming an industry that is failing California and fighting to make this an affordable state. We’re ready to take that same message, regardless of who comes in second place,” she said Tuesday night.

Allen looked likely to secure the second spot in November’s election, securing just under 20% of the early vote.

If elected, he would become the first insurance commissioner to have represented a community devastated by a major wildfire. The state senator — whose district encompasses part of the Palisades Fire burn zone, where 6,800 structures were destroyed last January — has authored a number of bills inspired by problems faced by Los Angeles County wildfire survivors.

In 2025, he worked to successfully pass SB495, which required insurance companies to pay at least 60% of a policyholder’s personal property insurance limit upfront if their home is destroyed during a declared state of emergency, rather than requiring an itemized list of belongings.

Allen is currently sponsoring legislation to require policyholders get up to three months’ advance notice before losing coverage and give the Department of Insurance broader authority to penalize insurance companies who do not comply with recommended actions following state investigations.

He was also the author of Proposition 4, the climate bond that voters approved in 2024, issuing $10 billion in bonds to fund projects that reduce and mitigate the impacts of climate risk.

“With me, you get somebody who knows how the system works and has been around the block a few times here in Sacramento,” Allen told the Chronicle in April. “The trick to effective work here is keeping your eyes on the prize, understanding what you’re trying to get to and getting something strong through.”

In the interview, Allen touted his decade-long career in Sacramento, saying he had the political relationships and experience necessary to pass difficult reforms. His policy priorities include coordinating with localities to pursue wildfire mitigation efforts and managed retreat “where appropriate” to reduce risk and bring insurers back into the market. In response to complaints from fire survivors about the department’s consumer services, Allen has pledged to expand staffing.

Like Kim, he painted an expansive picture of the role of the insurance commissioner, seeing places for the office to intervene in everything from life insurance to pet insurance.

“There’s an aspect of this job that’s going to involve being a bit of an Energizer bunny, jumping from topic to topic and ensuring that the system is treating people well and that you’re applying the same lens of making the system work well, focusing on consumers over and over again from product line to product line,” Allen said.

Whichever candidate prevails will take office right around the two-year mark of the devastating Eaton and Palisades wildfires in Los Angeles County, which set a record for the costliest wildfire event in global history.

The challenges the new commissioner will face will be different from Lara. The drumbeat of insurance companies fleeing the state or pursuing rate increases of 30% or more has slowed; the growth of the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, has tapered off over the past year. 

Yet there are still concerns about the financial stability of State Farm General Insurance Co., the state’s market leader in home insurance by far. Legal proceedings into both State Farm and the FAIR Plan’s handling of Los Angeles County wildfire claims are still ongoing, and new issues have emerged surrounding the danger of smoke contamination following fires.

Hovering above all of it is the threat of climate change fueling stronger storms and longer droughts that lead to more wildfires, prompting questions about whether California’s insurance market can survive at all.

California’s general election takes place Nov. 3.