How California insurance commissioner candidates Jane Kim and Ben Allen measure up

Bernie Sanders. Jane Fonda. There’s some star power endorsing each of the two Democratic candidates to be California’s next insurance commissioner.

Sure, it has historically been a little-known regulatory position. But its profile and importance are rising after a decade of some of the most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the state, which have disrupted one of the world’s largest insurance markets.

Not a homeowner? The commissioner's actions still affect your wallet if you're a renter, driver, pet owner, landlord, business owner, buyer of life insurance or possible user of workers' compensation.

If voters elect Jane Kim, the former San Francisco supervisor is proposing a drastic change that could have come out of the playbook of Sanders, her most famous backer: public disaster insurance.

If state Sen. Ben Allen wins, the movie star-backed candidate wants to get everyone on board to help reduce wildfire risk — individuals, communities, fire experts, local and state officials and the insurance industry — which he says would help solve the availability and affordability issues around homeowners insurance.

Voters are deciding between two candidates with a lot in common, including extensive track records of consumer advocacy, but who are offering very different ways of trying to solve the state’s insurance problems. At a debate between them moderated by CalMatters on Thursday, Kim characterized her opponent as offering to “tinker” and uphold the status quo, while Allen referred to Kim’s plans as “totally unprecedented and unmoored.”

The commissioner leads the Insurance Department, whose responsibilities include approving how much insurers can charge customers for property and casualty insurance, such as home, auto, commercial, renters, pet and travel.

A few years ago, some insurance companies stopped writing or renewing homeowner policies in areas with high fire risk, saying the state wasn’t approving their rate requests quickly enough so their prices weren’t matching the risk. That pushed homeowners into the FAIR Plan, a pool of insurers required to sell policies to those who can’t buy them from the regular market. The plan’s policies are generally more expensive and provide less coverage.

Last year, Commissioner Ricardo Lara rolled out new regulations that include faster rate reviews — when the Insurance Department looks at an insurer’s request to charge more money — and letting insurance companies factor reinsurance and catastrophe models into their rates. The department says the new rules are working because some insurers have said they plan to write more policies in the state again, though the state has not shared how many.

The new rules are generally leading to higher prices. Homeowners insurance rates in California rose 5% in the first half of the year, one of the largest increases in the nation, according to Insurify, a comparison site.

Meanwhile, average auto insurance premiums in the state are among the highest in the nation as replacement costs have gone up with the cost of vehicles. Both candidates said they hope to increase awareness of a state program that provides low-cost auto insurance to low-income drivers; Kim wants to expand it.

The Insurance Department reviews insurer practices and conducts investigations, though it’s limited in what it can order companies to do, as survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires in January 2025 have found as they struggle to rebuild partly because of insurance-claim delays and denials.

The candidates’ records

One of the candidates was in a position to take action on the issue: The governor recently signed Allen’s Senate Bill 1209, which increases the commissioner’s ability to compel insurers to fix problems the department finds after an investigation.

For example, the department found that State Farm violated the law in its handling of claims from last year’s fires in the Los Angeles area and recommended penalties, but the case has yet to go to a hearing. Although the law Allen authored, which was co-sponsored by Lara, is not retroactive, it should give the future commissioner additional power to hold insurers more accountable.

Democratic state Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón is among many fellow lawmakers endorsing Allen in the race.

She said the senator, who represents the Palisades, “jumped into action the second he heard about the fire.” That meant assessing the situation, rallying his staff and going to his district immediately afterward, she said.

“From the start to now, he has been active,” Limón said. “He has authored legislation, held town halls and brought stakeholders together.”

She worked with him on the climate bond that voters approved in 2024 that is now helping fund water infrastructure, wildfire prevention and more. Allen, who also authored a landmark plastics law to reduce pollution that continues to face blowback, has been a champion of the environment — hence the support from Fonda’s climate political action committee.

“He has been able to land some of these difficult deals,” Limón said.

Allen has been a state senator since 2014 and is terming out. In his last legislative session, he authored two other laws that will affect the insurance market: One will establish a state-backed loan program for homeowners to upgrade and harden their homes against fire. The other will require insurers to give homeowners more details if they’re planning to drop their coverage, and give homeowners time to fix the issues to try to retain their insurance.

“This law’s going to help people help existing coverage, and keep them off the FAIR Plan,” Allen told CalMatters. “We have to think about holistic solutions.”

Kim has not held an elected office since 2019. Her most recent jobs were California director for the Working Families Party, and before that, California political director for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.

A fellow former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recalled Kim’s impact during her time there. It includes helping pass the first $15 minimum wage ordinance in the state, securing tenant protections and providing free community college for the city’s residents.

“I got to witness for eight years a woman that was tenacious and relentless,” said Malia Cohen, the state controller who’s running for another term.

Cohen said she and Kim represented different districts in San Francisco and sometimes had opposing priorities: “She has been my enemy and my friend.”

She recalled working with Kim to “ban the box” that formerly incarcerated people used to have to check on job applications, a city ordinance that became a model for the state.

At a rally last week in San Francisco where Sanders campaigned for Proposition 40, the billionaire wealth tax, Kim delivered a speech in which she chalked up her grit to her mother and being drawn to public service from her father, both immigrants.

From left, insurance commissioner candidate Jane Kim, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna join hands and wave to supporters during a “Ballots Over Billionaires” rally at the Curran Theater in San Francisco on Oct. 3, 2026.

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Manuel Orbegozo

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CalMatters

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“My mother taught me to negotiate relentlessly in a world that did not see her, and it is what allowed me to walk into a room full of older white men and demand 40% affordable and middle-income housing,” Kim said, referring to her dealings with developers in San Francisco.

“She passed legislation in San Francisco that has shaped the California landscape,” Cohen said.

The candidates’ platforms

Kim and Allen have a lot in common. Each has promised to be tough on the insurance industry, including by pushing for insurer transparency and creating public report cards for them.

Both candidates have support from different labor, environmental and civil rights groups. But with two Democrats vying for the position for the first time, the endorsements reflect the divide within the party that has been highlighted by the victories of progressive candidates elsewhere, such as that of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The California Democratic Party endorsed Allen, while the California Labor Federation endorsed Kim. Both U.S. senators from California, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, endorsed Allen. U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, the Democrat from Silicon Valley who has long been aligned with Sanders, endorsed Kim.

“I think Jane is a strong progressive,” Khanna told CalMatters in San Francisco earlier this week. “She understands that the big oil companies should be paying for the extreme conditions that are causing wildfires in California.”

Kim’s proposal for public disaster insurance, which she said would be funded by premiums policyholders already pay to insurance companies, would allow consumers to keep their existing coverage. It would split off fire and flood coverage. The state would run the program and could invest some of the revenue from premiums into wildfire risk mitigation and not into the fossil-fuel industry like insurance companies do, she said.

Kim’s plan aligns with proposals by experts who say the current insurance model is failing because of growing risks, and that public involvement is the answer. A report by the California Earthquake Authority, which was tasked with studying how the state can boost its catastrophe resiliency, includes an analysis of a state-backed wildfire insurer.

The insurance industry and some consumer advocates have slammed her plan, saying it’s a bad idea to shift catastrophic burden to the state. A San Francisco Chronicle endorsement of Allen said Kim would “blow up” the insurance system during a time when the regulations Lara implemented last year need more time to work.

Kim said onstage at the rally with Sanders in San Francisco last week: “They will tell us our ideas are too expensive or magical thinking, but the status quo is not the safest path. It is the most expensive one.”

She has pointed to New Zealand’s public disaster system as an example. At the debate on Thursday, Allen voiced a frequent criticism: The coverage that system provides is limited and doesn’t include wildfire.

“What matters is not the type of catastrophe but that we are covering catastrophe, and that we would work to cover up to a median price of a home,” Kim responded. She said New Zealand covers catastrophes that exist in their country, like mudslides and earthquakes.

Kim also wants to create a public option for low-cost auto insurance by expanding the state’s existing program for low-income drivers. Allen says that would allow drivers who have more resources to take advantage.

Allen’s plan for comprehensive wildfire risk mitigation — which the recent earthquake authority’s report analyzed, too — would include pushing the insurance industry to do more than “pay lip service” to reducing fire risk. Some homeowners have complained that their home-hardening efforts haven’t led to significant savings on their premiums, or ensured that they will be able to buy affordable insurance.

“The commissioner is uniquely positioned to force the industry to the table to be a part of the solution, to help to incentivize and reward real, meaningful resilience and risk reduction all over the state,” he told CalMatters.

At the debate, Allen said his approach is “grounded in the realities we’re facing now, and how we actually fix the system as it is.”

Allen has said his plan includes thinking about mitigation as early as the development process. “We shouldn’t be building new construction that is irresponsible in high-risk areas,” he said earlier this year, before he and Kim ended up being the top two vote-getters in the June primary election.

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