SACRAMENTO, California — Progressives have spotted an opening to seize one of the most powerful regulatory posts in the country from establishment Democrats.
They’re bringing in Sen. Bernie Sanders to help.
“People are sick and tired of the greed of these billionaires, tired of them undermining democracy,” thundered Sanders (I-Vt.) at a Saturday rally in San Francisco, the first of three California stops to whip up support for a tax on billionaires and a clutch of progressive candidates. Among the headliners: Jane Kim, a Democrat and former San Francisco official running for state insurance commissioner.
For progressives, the insurance post represents a chance to transform policy in an influential — if little-known — role in the nation’s most populous state. And it offers an alternative route to power for a wing of the Democratic Party that flopped in this year’s gubernatorial race after billionaire Tom Steyer lost in the primary.
“This is an industry that needs a transformative shift,” Kim said in an interview. Voters are “tired of any candidate that’s going to do more of the same … they want to see someone fight the insurance industry.”
Kim is up against state Sen. Ben Allen, marking the first time two Democrats have ever competed directly for the seat. A recent poll showed voters narrowly preferring Kim in the Nov. 3 contest, though most remain undecided.
The stakes are unusually high, because California is experiencing perhaps the most extreme insurance market crunch in the nation. A rash of wildfires, combined with price regulations insurers say are too strict, have prompted insurers to pull back en masse and left more than half-a-million people with no private insurer willing to cover them.
California’s top insurance official enjoys a formidable set of powers including the authority to tamp down on price hikes, investigate insurers for their claims practices and propose legislation to change the insurance code. And Sanders’ visit reflects the intensity of the contest between establishment Democrats and their left flank over whether the state can nurse the market back to health — or take a much more muscular role in it.
Kim, a former civil rights attorney and Sanders campaigner backed by the California Democratic Socialists of America, intends to make the state a major provider of insurance against natural disasters for all homeowners — a sharp break from the state’s current private-led system. The program she’s proposing, which would need to be created through legislation, would be funded through a charge on home insurance policies.
Allen, a veteran lawmaker endorsed by the state Democratic Party, is proposing an extension of policies set by outgoing Commissioner Ricardo Lara, combined with efforts to reduce fire risk in communities that he says will attract insurers.
“Blowing something up with no plan is not going to help consumers,” Allen said of Kim’s platform in an interview. “I understand that people are mad. I’m angry, too … I’m putting a plan forward that’s bold, audacious, but also doable. I’m not going to lie to people about what’s possible.”
Lara, also a Democrat, has spent three years enacting policies meant to bring insurers back, like allowing them to set prices based on future climate risk, which they were previously barred from doing, and to pass on some of the costs linked to rising natural disasters around the world. He and insurers say the policies are helping the market recover, but some consumer groups have attacked the policies as too industry-friendly.
Both Allen and Kim have jockeyed to paint themselves as the candidate who can take on the powerful industry — despite offering fundamentally different approaches to the crisis. They are both calling themselves “fighters” who will hold the insurance industry accountable for their prices and practices, echoing Sanders’ anti-corporate tune, and selling a sticker with the slogan “People over profits,” a common Sanders refrain. Kim vowed at the San Francisco rally to “take on corporate greed.”
Their campaigns come at a time of broad public discontent with powerful industries and institutions. An April 2025 poll by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found Californians blamed insurers, public officials and utilities — more than climate change — for wildfires and the resulting chaos in the insurance markets.
That sentiment helped Kim earn nearly 700,000 more votes than Allen in a June primary. And it’s forced Allen to reframe his experience in Sacramento as an asset to consumers, rather than a vulnerability.
“Allen has to confront the perception that he’s part of the establishment — a dozen years in the state Legislature and the state Democratic Party’s endorsement will do that,” said Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who left the Allen campaign last spring.
Liao said Allen’s strongest counterargument is his ties to wildfire survivors in his Los Angeles district. In Allen’s campaign ads and media appearances, he’s highlighted how the 2025 fires displaced his friends and his mother, and that his office has helped hundreds of constituents pursue their insurance claims.
Kim, meanwhile, has “channeled the Democratic outrage we’re seeing across the country of being pissed off at the status quo and wanting to shake up the system,” Liao said.
Allen has stressed that as a state senator, he won concessions from powerful lobbies including petrochemical makers, oil and gas producers, and car dealerships. He said his “tried and true progressive values” have earned endorsements from Planned Parenthood’s California arm, the Sierra Club and the Consumer Federation of California.
“I’ve actually fought [insurers] many times and delivered important protections for consumers in direct battle with the insurance industry,” he said. “I don’t think that she can say that.”
Both candidates have refused to take money from the insurance industry, though Kim has gone further and refused all corporate political action committee money.
The populist tone of the campaign has left many in the insurance industry queasy.
The next commissioner will have “virtually unfettered discretion” over whether to continue Lara’s policies, said Steve Young, senior vice president and general counsel for the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of California. The group doesn’t represent insurance companies but the people who help market their product, and doesn’t make endorsements. But Young said “there’s a high level of anxiety” in the industry about how Kim’s policies would affect the market.
In a July report, a Wall Street analyst said the race gave him a pessimistic outlook for the insurance industry in California.
Allen is “pro private insurance market, but still not seen as friendly,” while Kim poses “a major risk to the private system,” Michael Zaremski, an analyst for BMO Capital Markets, wrote.
Compared to Lara’s tenure, things look “worse, with the potential for things to become dreadful.”