Three takeaways from California’s insurance commissioner candidate forum
The job is one of the toughest in California politics. But six candidates to become the state’s next insurance commissioner spent Friday evening trying to convince voters that they want it.
Companies have restricted selling policies in recent years, more and more customers are turning to the state’s backup homeowner provider and tens of thousands of Californians are still dealing with the fallout of recent devastating wildfires, particularly those that destroyed huge swaths of the Los Angeles area last year.
Candidates Ben Allen, Steven Bradford, Merritt Farren, Jane Kim, Lalo Vargas and Patrick Wolff appeared at a forum held at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco. Stacy Korsgaden, another contender, was not in attendance.
The primary election on June 2 will determine which of the two candidates will face off in November.
Here are some takeaways from Friday’s event.
Support for controversial law
The candidates were largely positive about Proposition 103, a 1988 ballot measure that requires insurance companies to have their price increases approved by the Department of Insurance -- and allows organizations and people to challenge those rate hikes.
Trade groups that represent companies contend that the process of reviewing price changes goes on too long. They are especially critical of Consumer Watchdog, an organization that frequently weighs in on requests to increase rates.
The only person to shout out Consumer Watchdog was Lalo Vargas, a Peace and Freedom Party candidate, who said he works as a science teacher in Southern California.
“We should protect Prop. 103,” he said.
Allen, a Democratic state senator from Santa Monica, said the law “has done an incredible job of keeping rates low and protecting consumers.”
Bradford, a Democrat who formerly represented the Los Angeles area in the state senate, said Prop. 103 has worked, but needs to be updated because it takes too long for rate increases and decreases to be reviewed.
Farren, an attorney and Republican, was challenging a State Farm rate increase before recently becoming a candidate. He said he would require companies to provide more information needed to review rate requests at the beginning of the process as a way to speed it up.
Kim, a Democrat and former San Francisco Supervisor, said she wanted to use the law to rein in company profits and CEO pay so it would keep protecting consumers.
Wolff, a financial analyst who is also a Democrat, said he saw no reason for the law to be changed, but added that it needed to be used better to hold companies more accountable in their rate requests.
Fissures emerge
Candidates divided along clearer lines when Kim brought up one of her campaign goals: to create a public homeowner insurance system, like a single-payer health care system, that would cover claims from natural disasters instead of relying on private companies to do so.
In the current “profit-driven insurance model,” she said, companies keep policies on the homes at less risk of wildfires, but raise premiums and don’t renew coverage for everyone else.
Vargas went even further, saying he was for building a public insurer that also covered auto policies. He called for abolishing insurance companies, seizing their assets and using that money to fund a public system.
None of the candidates joined him in that call.
Allen argued the health care and homeowner insurance systems are different and said he feared a public model, like the one pitched by Kim, could cause major financial challenges. A major wildfire, he said, would be like everybody getting sick at the same time.
“Think about what would happen if the state suddenly on the hook without any private support after a major catastrophe?” Allen added.
Wolff, who also didn’t advocate for a public model, said private companies were important for the homeowner insurance system “because we want the competition to get the pricing of risk accurately.”
Experience an asset or liability?
The candidates for the role don’t have experience within the insurance department they would lead. But they each said their backgrounds each made them qualified for the responsibility.
Farren said he and his husband lost their home in the Palisades Fire. That was hard enough, he said, “then, the next hit was insurance and for many, that was, and remains, as traumatic an experience as the fire itself.”
He said his years in business, working for Amazon and Disney, also give him an edge.
Vargas said his work in the classroom talking to young people about climate change, and how to address it, is why voters should pick him.
Wolff tried to separate himself from the other Democrats in the race by asking a question: Do voters want a politician as the next insurance commissioner “or do we want somebody with deep expertise in insurance and financial analysis?”
He said he has been reviewing and investing in insurance markets as part of his job for the past 20 years, which is why Californians should pick him.
The other three Democrats argued that their political ties were why they were right for the job.
After her two terms as a supervisor, Kim worked for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign before becoming state director of the Working Families Party. Those experiences, she said, have allowed her to hear the concerns of people across the state.
Allen said his Senate office has spent the last year helping people work through what he called insurance system “dysfunction.” He vowed to aggressively hold companies accountable, something he said he has done with other industries during his almost 12 years in the Legislature.
Bradford, who also served in the Assembly, said his experience chairing utility committees and spearheading laws in the Legislature — including one that returned property to descendants of a Black family that had it taken away by a Southern California city and another that allowed for decertification of police officers for misconduct — make him the person for the role.
“I’ve done heavy lifts my entire political career,” he said. “I have never backed down from a fight.”
This story was originally published February 14, 2026 at 9:09 AM with the headline "Three takeaways from California’s insurance commissioner candidate forum."
