Democrats Jane Kim and Ben Allen, with more than three-quarters of the votes counted in the race for California insurance commissioner, jumped ahead in initial counts of the vote-by-mail ballots on Tuesday night and continued to hold a sizeable lead over opponents as results were updated after polls closed at 8 p.m.
Kim, who was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) in a statewide election for the first time in California, is holding a slim edge over Allen.
“Californians are hungry for a candidate who’s going to challenge the status quo and really champion an affordability agenday,” said Kim in a phone interview early Wednesday. “We’ve been running on a pretty singular platform of transforming a system that affects most Californians. The insurance system is broken.”
Allen, 48, a state senator who represents parts of Santa Monica and L.A. that were badly damaged in last year’s wildfires, said in a late Tuesday phone interview near midnight that the race against Kim will be a tough one.
“It’ll be the first time we’ve gotten a Democrat versus a Democrat in a constitutional race since the general primary began as a phenomenon. We will have two different visions for the state,” he said.
“I’ve actually experienced a major calamity in my own community, and seen the dysfunction of the system up close,” he said.
The election has become a bit of a high-profile contest, where a range of policy ideas were floated in the primary, as increasingly frequent disasters have rocked the private homeowners’ insurance market in California.
In the past, the job of insurance commissioner has been one of the lower-profile statewide positions, charged with regulating the insurance industry — everything from auto and life insurance to property and casualty.
The race, which has attracted more attention and money than usual, comes amid concerns over last year’s wildfires that erupted in the Los Angeles area, and led to higher insurance premiums for homeowners throughout the state.
LIVE ELECTION RESULTS: See a chart of the latest vote counts
The next insurance commissioner will respond to a range of political problems, especially insurance industry demands to raise premiums to reflect growing wildfire risk, and challenges to keep at a distance from insurers who were accused during the campaign of being in the current commissioner’s pocket.
Regardless of political party, the top vote-getters will move on to the Nov. 3 general election, with the winner assuming the mantle of a job that has plenty of tough decisions to make.
For the 2026 race, a crowded field of 11 candidates was vying to replace term-limited incumbent Ricardo Lara, the eighth person in the commissioner role since it became an elected position in 1988.
California’s Secretary of State’s office will continue to tally votes daily until all are counted. Continue to check back here for updates.
In the campaign leading up to the primary, forums held in the hard-hit Pacific Palisades and Altadena communities attracted victims of the January 2025 wildfires who felt shortchanged by the insurance system that failed to pay out claims on smoke damages or didn’t pay at all. Some people complained about paying higher premiums without receiving any of the benefits of insurance coverage.
At an Altadena forum last month, candidates called for tougher sanctions against insurance companies that they said mishandled claims. Some of the attendees expressed the need for stiffer sanctions for State Farm and other insurers for failing to pay out claims on a speedier basis. But after last year’s deadly fires, State Farm claimed it was in a precarious spot financially and needed an emergency $1.02 billion lifeline to stay afloat.
Also see: California insurance commissioner candidates vow reform, fixes for FAIR Plan
Allen urged further penalties against State Farm — though some of that sentiment may require legislation in Sacramento.
Allen, an attorney by trade, said he is trying to “tighten the screws on bad behavior” by pushing for state legislation that would increase the enforcement powers of the insurance department.
The next insurance commissioner will face difficult policy decisions regarding future rate hikes and ways to keep insurers from leaving the state.
In March, State Farm won a 17% emergency rate increase to partially fill the gap in losses. But last month, Lara took legal action against State Farm, alleging the company mishandled wildfire claims in the devastated Los Angeles fire zones. In a state court filing, the insurance regulator said it is seeking as much as $4 million in penalties on 398 violations of state law from State Farm following a seven-month-old investigation.
Lara claimed the company underpaid claims and was slow to investigate damage to homes and possible contamination from smoke, caused by conflagrations that destroyed huge swaths of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena. The current commissioner also wants to prohibit State Farm, California’s largest home insurer, from writing new policies for a year.
The candidates have vowed to push for ways to resolve California’s homeowners’ insurance crisis, which they maintain is far from over.
On the campaign trail in the Pacific Palisades in March, candidates were barraged with questions from people in attendance who accused L.A. Mayor Karen Bass of “failed leadership” for insufficient firefighting resources at the time of last year’s fires and concerns over the lack of transparency in ratemaking policies.
The candidate who wins in November will be faced with addressing the state’s insurer of last resort — referred to as the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR Plan. Nearly two weeks ago, the FAIR Plan got the green light to raise rates 29.1% for certain homeowners starting Oct. 15 — on the eve of the general election.
Kim, 48, a former San Francisco supervisor from Lakeport, is proposing a “single-payer” model to tackle the state’s home and disaster insurance crisis that doesn’t rely on profits.
She wants to replace the current private market and the FAIR Plan with a centralized, state-managed system to cover wildfire and flood risks.
Kim, who supports capping insurance executive pay, has proposed a state-run “natural disaster insurance for all” plan that would make coverage automatic and universal, with everyone in the same risk pool and premiums based on property cost and risk.
Kim’s website says the plan “would address climate disaster instead of avoiding it. The private insurance business model is to avoid losses, not to reduce risk … A public insurer would invest in prevention and resiliency, and the public would benefit with fewer claims to pay out.”
Allen wants transparency in rate filings, push back on rate hikes not supported by facts, and ensure insurers properly account for risk reductions.
Allen also wants to lower insurance costs by working on policies with the state legislature to update building codes to require more fire-resistant materials, revise land-use policies to minimize building in flammable areas near wildlands, and disincentivize oil companies from exacerbating climate change.
“Wildfires don’t just impact one neighborhood — they affect the stability of the entire market,” said Allen in a statement to the Southern California News Group. He said the state needs to encourage policies to reduce risk at its source by investing in wildfire mitigation and making communities more fire-safe.