The Brief

Progressive Jane Kim, one of two Democratic candidates for California insurance commissioner, is betting that voters are as hungry for change as those who powered Zohran Mamdani into New York City's mayor's office and Abdul El-Sayed into Michigan's U.S. Senate race after the Democratic Party endorsed her rival, state Sen. Ben Allen.

How it plays out could rest on how engaged voters will be about an elected position they may not know much about; how much weight disillusioned voters give to the state party's endorsement; and how much they respond to ads and mailers that they’ll be bombarded with ahead of the November election.

Kim, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, is squaring off against Allen to become the regulator of the state’s massive insurance market. Kim wants to establish state-run natural disaster insurance for all and expand low-cost auto insurance to all California drivers, in line with well-known progressive ideas like Medicare for All. Allen wants to stabilize and improve the private insurance market after years of availability and affordability problems largely driven by increased wildfire risk and massive, deadly wildfires.

Kim’s message has struck a chord with many Californians: She got the most votes, more than 27%, among the 11 candidates on the ballot in the June primary. Allen came in second with more than 19%.

“(Kim and Allen are) a microcosm of the fracture going on in the Democratic Party across the country,” said Shauhin Talesh, a law professor at UC Irvine whose expertise includes insurance and consumer protection. “They both think insurance companies should be regulated. The question: How aggressively should California intervene and what role should the government claim?”

Allen recently secured the California Democratic Party’s endorsement, which Talesh said wasn’t surprising because the senator is seen as a more “traditional” candidate.

Kim, whose accomplishments include securing free community college for San Francisco residents and the state’s first $15 minimum wage, was the director of the California Working Families Party, a party within the Democratic umbrella that supports progressive policies including raising the minimum wage. She is backed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, on whose presidential campaign she worked in 2020.

“Is this going to become another situation where people are speaking with their votes (and going against the establishment)?” Talesh asked. “At what point does Democratic Party recognize it?”

But Kim isn’t just lacking the state party’s endorsement. The insurance industry is, not surprisingly, leery of her plans to have the state play a greater role in insurance. So are some consumer advocacy groups such as Consumer Watchdog, whose founder wrote the ballot initiative that became the state’s insurance law.

Jamie Court, president of the group, warned that a state-run natural disaster insurance fund — which Kim says would be funded by portions of premiums policyholders pay to their insurance companies — would require tens of billions of dollars to start, which he said could be wiped out by one catastrophic fire.

Kim has said that while her proposal would require further study, her critics fail to address that there needs to be more discussion and “public engagement to reform the system.”

“I don’t think just allowing the insurance industry to raise rates is the solution,” she told CalMatters in an interview. “People will lose their homes or go uninsured. And that will wreck the economy.”

Allen told CalMatters that his opponent’s proposal “is effectively a massive subsidy for those who are rich” because their homes will cost more to replace after a fire.

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said Kim’s message is resonating with Californians because of “a populist wave, not a progressive wave” nationwide.

He noted that primary results showed Kim did well in historically conservative areas such as the Inland Empire and the Central Valley, as well as in Los Angeles County — which includes Allen’s district.

Considering those results, Jorge Contreras, California director of the Working Families Party, called the state Democratic Party’s endorsement of Allen “out of touch.”

Some delegates for Kim complained their votes did not seem to be counted; Kim called for a recount.

“The votes were counted,” said Robin Swanson, spokesperson for the party. “And recounted. The result was the same.”

Insurance Commissioner candidate Ben Allen delivers remarks during the California Democratic Party convention at Moscone Center in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 2026.

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Yalonda M. James

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San Francisco Chronicle via AP

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Contreras noted that the next day, the California Labor Federation endorsed Kim.

Not everyone buys the "moderate" label being pinned on Allen — including at least one of his own supporters.

“Ben is a progressive by any standard,” said RL Miller, former chair of the California Democratic Party’s Environmental Caucus who also runs a political action committee, Climate Hawks. The group doesn’t endorse in California races, but Miller said she personally endorsed Allen.

“He’s stood with us and authored landmark climate bills over the years,” Miller said, adding that the “tribal nature of Democratic politics these days” might be the reason Allen is being seen as the more moderate candidate.

Allen has a strong track record on the environment, including his work on Proposition 4, the $10 billion bond measure approved by voters in 2024, which includes funding for wildfire prevention. He also authored the law that decreases the use of single-use plastics.

Allen’s votes have also been more aligned with some of the same groups now supporting Kim, including the California Labor Federation. The senator’s record has generally not aligned with business interests, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

Though both candidates have pledged not to take money from the insurance industry, Contreras said it’s important to follow the money in this race.

Business groups spent $1.5 million to oppose Kim’s primary campaign, mostly from JOBSPAC, a coalition of employers sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce, according to Digital Democracy.

Meanwhile, Contreras said “Ben Allen has taken crypto money, which came in big for him at the end.” Campaign finance records show billionaire Chris Larsen, co-founder of crypto company Ripple, in May gave $1 million to the PAC sponsored by California Environmental Voters, the biggest outside spender supporting Allen’s campaign.

Contreras said billionaires are going to spend a lot of money supporting moderates this election cycle: “Why? Because they want the status quo. Jane is now going to be the bogeyman.”

Jane Kim speaks to supporters during an election night party at El Rio in San Francisco on June 2, 2026.

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Beth LaBerge

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KQED

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The biggest contributors to Kim’s campaign are the California Working Families Party and the California Teachers Association, which gave about $365,000 and $150,000 each, respectively.

The main difference between this battle and other contests going on elsewhere is that many voters don’t know exactly what the insurance commissioner does, said Kevin Liao, a Democratic political consultant who briefly worked on Allen’s campaign before leaving to work on Tom Steyer’s gubernatorial campaign during the primary.

That could mean that voters will rely on shortcuts such as Sanders’ endorsement of Kim, or the California Democrats’ endorsement of Allen. The race could come down to whose brand will convince voters, he said.

“We’re at a moment when voters, certainly the base of the Democratic Party, are fed up with the party establishment,” Liao said.

But not all candidates with more progressive ideas have found success: In California, the progressive Steyer failed to advance to the general election. Recently, David Crowley, a moderate Democrat, beat Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor by less than a percentage point.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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Regular reports out of immigrant detention facilities, some as recent as last month, indicate a pattern of complaints: bad water, untrained staff and slow response times to acute and chronic medical conditions.

Despite those complaints — echoed by disability rights groups, a federal judge and the California Justice Department — Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities have received high marks on their own internal scorecards.

An analysis by the Project on Government Oversight found that, under the Trump administration, the number of ICE detention facilities with the agency’s highest inspection grade, “superior,” has tripled since 2024. That coincided, the analysis found, with weakened detention standards and fewer inspections.

Those “superior” ratings have coincided with a rise in deaths in immigration detention custody — 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE custody since 2004.

Four people have died at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center since August 2025, according to the Project on Government Oversight, the most of any facility in the country during that span.

The ratings come from ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight, which also grades the facilities for “deficiencies,” or violations of ICE detention standards. Those failures are important: If a facility fails twice in a row, it can lose federal funding.

“Despite this provision — or perhaps because of it — detention facilities rarely received failing grades from inspectors between fiscal years 2022 and 2026,” the Project on Government Oversight investigators wrote.

ICE detention facilities are holding a record number of people, at least 65,000 on July 11. But even with that skyrocketing custody population, ICE has also found fewer violations among its facilities.

The analysis found that the number of violations at ICE facilities dropped by 68% between 2022 and 2025.

The Project on Government Oversight, which describes itself as a nonpartisan investigative nonprofit, said in its report that ICE did not respond to multiple interview attempts. The nonprofit released its findings this morning and CalMatters is seeking comment from ICE.

When news media organizations reach out to for-profit prison companies that run these detention centers, like GEO Group and CoreCivic, about complaints, they often point to these federal detention standards as a counterpoint to specific allegations.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

It’s election season, which means California residents are receiving text messages from candidates making pleas for their votes, time and money ahead of November.

If you feel like your phone is being flooded with political messages, you’re not alone.

According to data compiled by PACspam.org, an organization that analyzes political spam texts, the number of political texts in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the last decade, from 300 million in 2018 to 66.5 billion in 2024.

In California, registered voters received more than 2 billion political texts in 2022, according to the latest yearly data available from Robokiller, a text and spam call blocker app.

Experts note that the texts are far less expensive, compared to other methods of reaching voters, so candidates have little reason to pull back.

“It’s basically like if you’re not doing it, it’s a big missed opportunity,” said Julia Leitner, a political strategist.

But some lawmakers want to change that.

The California State Assembly is in committee working out the details of a bill that would bar text message advertisements, including campaign ones, from being sent between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. and allow people who receive the ads during those hours to seek legal damages of $500 per text.

Meantime, campaign texts are legal under Federal Communications Commission guidelines. So, if you don’t want the texts, how can you make them stop?

How to stop receiving campaign texts 

There are steps you can take to reduce the number of political texts you receive.

You can reply “STOP,” and the sender should cease sending messages. But that may not end them completely.

Alex Quilici, the CEO of YouMail, a phone call blocking service, said unsubscribing from one text chain likely won’t stop you from receiving messages from other text chains.

“The question is how big is the list?” Quilici said. “Are they just taking you off the list for one candidate? Or [do] they take you off the party list? You may have to reply ‘stop’ a bunch to really stop them.”

If the sender keeps contacting you, you can report them directly to the FCC by forwarding the text to 7726 or “SPAM”.

The FCC is able to investigate the number and potentially prevent the sender from delivering more messages if they’re violating their rules.

Why campaigns use texts

Leitner, who is a recruiting director at Close the Gap California, an organization that prepares progressive female candidates to run for seats in the California Legislature, said texts are a low-cost and effective tool for campaigns to connect with voters.

“We are all on our phones all of the time and so a text message is kind of the easiest way to reach a voter,” Leitner said.

It costs campaigns tens of cents to send each text. Leitner said that often makes them a better investment than direct mail campaigns, which can cost between $0.43 to $1.19 per piece of mail, or TV spots that can cost hundreds to millions of dollars, depending on factors like market, size and time.

How campaigns get your information

Campaigns have several ways to get your contact information. One is by requesting voter files from the Secretary of State’s office. When you register to vote, including online or at the DMV, that information goes into a database.

State law allows certain people, such as political candidates, academics and journalists, to request that information, which can include your name, date of birth, address, contact information and political party preference.

Another way campaigns get your data is by buying it.

Huge databases, like Democratic Data Exchange and Data Trust, use a combination of public records and their own consumer data to curate lists of people for campaigns to contact.

But there are restrictions as to how that information can be used, said Paul Mitchell, vice president of bipartisan voter data firm Political Data Intelligence.

“We don’t sell data to anybody using [it] for private purposes,” Mitchell said. “It is only for campaigns or if a local government wants to reach voters.”

Data brokers who operate in California are required to report their activities, including what information they collect and who they’re selling it to, annually to the California Data Broker Registry operated by the California Privacy Protection Agency.

If they don’t, they can be fined $200 per day they fail to register by the CPPA, be charged the $6,000 registration fees they failed to pay, and have to pay for expenses incurred by the CPPA in their investigation.

Data companies often collect information when voters donate to political causes through fundraising technology like ActBlue or WinRed, and agree to receiving texts, calls or other types of communication.