{"id":436259,"date":"2026-08-18T13:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T13:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/436259\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T13:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T13:10:12","slug":"will-california-vote-progressive-in-insurance-commissioner-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/436259\/","title":{"rendered":"Will California vote \u2018progressive\u2019 in insurance commissioner race?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Levi Sumagaysay<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

Progressive Jane Kim, one of two Democratic candidates for California insurance commissioner, is betting that\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ll be bombarded with ahead of the November election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kim, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, is squaring off against Allen<\/a> to become the regulator of the state\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Kim\u2019s 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%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c(Kim and Allen are) a microcosm of the fracture going on in the Democratic Party across the country,\u201d said Shauhin Talesh, a law professor at UC Irvine whose expertise includes insurance and consumer protection. \u201cThey both think insurance companies should be regulated. The question: How aggressively should California intervene and what role should the government claim?\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen recently secured the California Democratic Party\u2019s endorsement, which Talesh said wasn\u2019t surprising because the senator is seen as a more \u201ctraditional\u201d candidate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kim, whose accomplishments include securing free community college for San Francisco residents and the state\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this going to become another situation where people are speaking with their votes (and going against the establishment)?\u201d Talesh asked. \u201cAt what point does Democratic Party recognize it?\u201d<\/p>\n

But Kim isn\u2019t just lacking the state party\u2019s endorsement. The insurance industry is, not surprisingly, leery of her plans to have the state play a greater role in insurance<\/a>. So are some consumer advocacy groups such as Consumer Watchdog, whose founder wrote the ballot initiative that became the state\u2019s insurance law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jamie Court, president of the group, warned that a state-run natural disaster insurance fund \u2014 which Kim says would be funded by portions of premiums policyholders pay to their insurance companies \u2014 would require tens of billions of dollars to start, which he said could be wiped out by one catastrophic fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kim has said that while her proposal would require further study, her critics fail to address that there needs to be more discussion and \u201cpublic engagement to reform the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think just allowing the insurance industry to raise rates is the solution,\u201d she told CalMatters in an interview. \u201cPeople will lose their homes or go uninsured. And that will wreck the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen told CalMatters that his opponent\u2019s proposal \u201cis effectively a massive subsidy for those who are rich\u201d because their homes will cost more to replace after a fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said Kim\u2019s message is resonating with Californians because of \u201ca populist wave, not a progressive wave\u201d nationwide.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 which includes Allen\u2019s district.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Considering those results, Jorge Contreras, California director of the Working Families Party, called the state Democratic Party\u2019s endorsement of Allen \u201cout of touch.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some delegates for Kim complained their votes did not seem to be counted; Kim called for a recount.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe votes were counted,\u201d said Robin Swanson, spokesperson for the party. \u201cAnd recounted. The result was the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contreras noted that the next day, the California Labor Federation endorsed Kim.<\/p>\n

Not everyone buys the “moderate” label being pinned on Allen \u2014 including at least one of his own supporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cBen is a progressive by any standard,\u201d said RL Miller, former chair of the California Democratic Party\u2019s Environmental Caucus who also runs a political action committee, Climate Hawks. The group doesn\u2019t endorse in California races, but Miller said she personally endorsed Allen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s stood with us and authored landmark climate bills over the years,\u201d Miller said, adding that the \u201ctribal nature of Democratic politics these days\u201d might be the reason Allen is being seen as the more moderate candidate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/a> that decreases the use of single-use plastics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Allen\u2019s votes have also been more aligned with some of the same groups now supporting Kim, including the California Labor Federation. The senator\u2019s record has generally not aligned with business interests, according to CalMatters\u2019 Digital Democracy database<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though both candidates have pledged not to take money from the insurance industry, Contreras said it\u2019s important to follow the money in this race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Business groups spent $1.5 million to oppose Kim\u2019s primary campaign, mostly from JOBSPAC, a coalition of employers sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce, according to Digital Democracy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Contreras said \u201cBen Allen has taken crypto money, which came in big for him at the end.\u201d 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\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n

Contreras said billionaires are going to spend a lot of money supporting moderates this election cycle: \u201cWhy? Because they want the status quo. Jane is now going to be the bogeyman.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The biggest contributors to Kim\u2019s campaign are the California Working Families Party and the California Teachers Association, which gave about $365,000 and $150,000 each, respectively.<\/p>\n

The main difference between this battle and other contests going on elsewhere is that many voters don\u2019t know exactly what the insurance commissioner does<\/a>, said Kevin Liao, a Democratic political consultant who briefly worked on Allen\u2019s campaign before leaving to work on Tom Steyer\u2019s gubernatorial campaign during the primary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That could mean that voters will rely on shortcuts such as Sanders\u2019 endorsement of Kim, or the California Democrats\u2019 endorsement of Allen. The race could come down to whose brand will convince voters, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at a moment when voters, certainly the base of the Democratic Party, are fed up with the party establishment,\u201d Liao said.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Levi Sumagaysay, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Progressive Jane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,35072,3002],"class_list":["post-436259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-election-2026","tag-insurance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}