Californians will elect a new insurance commissioner on Nov. 3, choosing between two Democrats with sharply different plans for a homeowners market hit by wildfire losses and carrier pullbacks.
Allen would keep private insurers at the center, with faster rate reviews, tougher claims oversight and statewide wildfire mitigation. Kim would create a public, nonprofit insurer for natural disasters. The winner replaces Ricardo Lara, who is term-limited, and will regulate the largest property insurance market in the country.
Kim finished first in the June 2 top-two primary with 27.4% of the vote, about 2.33 million ballots, to Allen's 19.4%, or 1.65 million, according to Secretary of State results. Republican Stacy Korsgaden was third with 15.5%, as Insurance Business reported.
This is the first general election for the office between two Democrats since it became elected in 1988. Analysts quoted by Mission Local and IVN said Republican and independent voters could decide the outcome, or skip the race altogether. Kim would be the first woman to hold the job. Allen would be the first commissioner whose own home was damaged in a major disaster.
A September survey of 1,000 voters had Kim at about 25% and Allen at 18%, with 57% undecided, NBC reported. Little independent polling has followed.
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Allen is endorsed by the California Democratic Party, US Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, the Consumer Federation of California and Jane Fonda's climate PAC. Kim's endorsers include Sen. Bernie Sanders, the California Teachers Association and the Working Families Party, which she previously led in California. She was Sanders' California political director in 2020.
Allen had raised about $1.9 million through late June to Kim's roughly $809,000, according to state records cited by InsuranceNewsNet. Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen gave $1 million to a California Environmental Voters committee supporting Allen, CalMatters reported. Union-backed groups have spent on Kim's behalf, but Mission Local reported that outside spending against her has outpaced spending for her.
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Allen has been a state senator since 2014. His district includes Pacific Palisades, which burned in January 2025, and his own home was affected. He is running on restoring competition and keeping private carriers writing in California.
He would speed up Proposition 103 rate reviews and keep Lara's rules allowing insurers to use catastrophe models and reinsurance costs in pricing. He told the San Francisco Chronicle that the status quo has in some cases kept rates artificially low and hurt availability. He has acknowledged that the highest-risk homes would keep paying significantly more.
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On claims, he authored SB 1209, signed this year, which lets the commissioner order insurers to fix problems found in investigations without a lengthy legal process. LAist reported he would also add complaint-handling staff and appoint a consumer advocate inside the department.
Allen wants state and local government to pay for home hardening and community-scale wildfire defense, and wants that work reflected in premiums. He has called for rethinking development in the highest-risk areas and for more oversight of the FAIR Plan. He opposes opening the state's low-cost auto program to all drivers, saying it could hurt the low-income drivers it was built for.
Kim has called his approach tinkering with a broken system. Some consumer advocates say Lara's catastrophe-model rules, which Allen would keep, do too little to make insurers expand coverage. Allen pledged not to accept insurance industry money. In 2025, his campaign said it would refund insurer donations after news reports found them.
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Kim, a civil rights attorney, served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2011 to 2019. She argues that private insurers are set up to avoid catastrophe losses rather than reduce them.
Her main proposal, Natural Disaster Insurance for All, would create a state-run, nonprofit program guaranteeing coverage for disasters such as wildfire and flood, with private policies still covering other risks. Kim told CBS News it would be funded by premiums, as private insurance is, and she has also talked about fees on insurers. Any surplus would go to reserves, reinsurance and wildfire mitigation. She points to New Zealand, France and Spain as models.
Kim describes the program as a concept that would need legislation and study by the department, and says it would be phased in. She has not estimated its cost. She has said coverage should ideally reach the state's median home value, and told Heatmap it could not cover a Palisades-scale fire in its first year. No private insurer could either, she said.
She would also penalize claim delays, freeze rates after a policyholder files a claim, publish an insurer performance dashboard and set a minimum discount for mitigation. LAist reported she wants to open the low-cost auto program to all drivers and tie insurers' auto business to whether they write homeowners coverage. For the FAIR Plan, she wants open board meetings and voting members who represent the public.
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Allen cites a California Earthquake Authority study that modeled a state disaster insurer, though not Kim's plan specifically, and estimated it could need up to $25 billion in capital. With less capital, policyholders could face assessments of around $2,000 each after an extreme fire, Heatmap reported. Michael Wara, a wildfire and insurance expert at Stanford, told KQED that public insurance programs tend to be plagued by problems. United Policyholders executive director Amy Bach has also expressed skepticism about Kim, the San Francisco Standard reported.
Both candidates promise tougher enforcement on slow claims, more transparency about insurer practices, closer oversight of the FAIR Plan and public funding for wildfire mitigation. Both say they won't take insurance company money.
After the primary, both also showed interest in a proposal from Republican candidate Merritt Farren for a state reinsurance authority, funded by a fee on policies, to encourage insurers to write in California, CalMatters reported. Kim said it might turn out to be a more efficient model.
Shauhin Talesh, a UC Irvine law professor who studies insurance, told CalMatters the race reflects a broader split among Democrats, though both candidates agree insurers need regulating.
California's insurance market would be the third largest in the world on its own, according to National Association of Insurance Commissioners figures cited by Heatmap. Homeowners premiums rose 84% from the end of 2020 to March 2026, according to Stanford's Climate and Energy Policy Program.
FAIR Plan enrollment grew 43% between September 2024 and December 2025, Insurance Business reported. The plan needed a $1 billion assessment on member insurers in 2025 after the Los Angeles fires, and several large carriers have left the state or stopped writing new homeowners policies.
Read more: California’s wildfire insurance crisis deepens as FAIR Plan faces funding shortfall
Under Proposition 103, insurers need the department's approval before changing many property and casualty rates. The next commissioner will also inherit unresolved disputes with major carriers.
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Insurers have more reason to welcome Allen. He backs the rule changes carriers sought under Lara, including forward-looking catastrophe models, reinsurance costs in rate filings and faster approvals. He has also argued that California's rate controls have at times held prices too low to keep coverage available. Grist reported that he describes the commissioner's job partly as convening state agencies and the industry to cut wildfire risk and coax carriers back.
He would not give carriers a free hand. SB 1209 gives the commissioner faster enforcement powers over claims handling, and Allen has promised more complaint staff. Like Kim, he has refused industry campaign money.
Kim's platform reaches well past the disaster fund. She wants minimum loss ratios that would require insurers to pay out 65% of homeowners premiums and 70% of auto premiums in claims or refund the difference, The American Prospect reported. She would also freeze rates for a period after a claim, tie auto writing to homeowners writing and open the low-cost auto program to all drivers. The industry and some consumer advocates have criticized her disaster plan for shifting catastrophe risk onto the state, CalMatters reported.
Some argue the fund itself could work in carriers' favor by taking wildfire and flood risk off their books. Kim has said her plan would effectively let insurers off the hook. A Washington Monthly analysis skeptical of the plan made a related point: building a public fund from scratch could leave policyholders paying twice while insurers profit. The fund would need legislation, so Kim's nearer-term impact would come mostly through pricing and claims rules.
Claims handling will face more scrutiny whoever wins, and both candidates want mitigation to count in pricing.
An Allen win would likely bring faster rate decisions and continued use of catastrophe models in filings, aimed at drawing carriers back to some areas. Allen has acknowledged that the highest-risk homes would pay more.
A Kim win would mean tighter pricing and claims rules well before any public disaster fund arrives. NBC reported concerns that her approach could drive more insurers out. Her supporters say the private market is already failing high-risk homeowners.
For clients, documented home hardening and defensible space are likely to carry more weight in premiums and eligibility under either candidate. [TK: broker or industry group comment on what each outcome would mean for carrier appetite.]
The general election is Nov. 3, and every active registered voter in California receives a mail ballot.
