EDITORIAL: Endorsement: Elect Ben Allen California's next insurance commissioner

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There is no greater looming threat to affordability in California than its home insurance crisis.

Housing prices in the state have played the central role in its loss of residents to other states for two decades, but insurance costs have not. Strict consumer protections since the late 1980s kept premiums down to among the lowest in the country.

But increasingly devastating wildfires are unraveling one of the last bargains Californians have enjoyed.

Over the last four years, carriers have retreated from the state entirely or have paused writing new policies. Rates have risen sharply across the Bay Area. Meanwhile, homeowners throughout the region — from rural Sonoma County to suburban San Jose — have been pushed into the FAIR Plan, the state's high-risk pool offering expensive, limited coverage. Disconcertingly yet unsurprisingly, the prospect of rising premiums is sinking home sales.

With the June 2 primary approaching, Bay Area voters must understand: When they choose among the dozen candidates to replace termed-out Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, the viability of homeownership is on the ballot.

Ben Allen is our choice to navigate our region through this unprecedented crisis.

Here is how we reached our decision in favor of the 48-year-old state senator who has represented western Los Angeles County, including areas destroyed by the Palisades Fire, for the last 12 years.

Since Californians passed Proposition 103 in 1988, the insurance commissioner has had powerful independent authority over the country's largest property and casualty insurance market. Insurers, for example, must receive approval from the commissioner's Department of Insurance before they can raise rates.

However, as powerful as this office is, many underlying causes of today's metastasizing crisis — climate change, land-use policies, construction costs and fire suppression tactics — lie outside of the commissioner's direct control.

Allen understands the limits of this office. In fact, he is the only candidate who consistently frames the problem as a system-wide challenge necessitating that insurers, lawmakers, developers, homeowners and polluters align.

Treat the causes

As Allen explained to our editorial board, the next commissioner must work hand in glove with the state Legislature on policies that will materially lower risks. That means updating our building codes to require more fire-resistant materials; revising our land-use policies to minimize building in predictably flammable areas at the edge of wildlands; and disincentivizing oil companies from further exacerbating climate change.

These changes are the preconditions for lower rates.

Allen's advantages are twofold: He is humble enough to acknowledge the insurance commissioner cannot solve this problem by fiat, and he has a substantial legislative record and relationships in Sacramento that will be necessary to craft broader solutions.

Unlike most of the other candidates in this race, Allen has already been working on these issues in the Legislature. He co-authored Prop. 4, a statewide wildfire prevention and climate resilience bond approved by voters in 2024. His currently pending Senate Bill 1182 requires that developers in wildfire-prone areas address insurability risks upfront instead of externalizing those costs onto the FAIR Plan and, ultimately, the public.

Doing this job right requires navigating state politics, negotiating with competing economic interest groups and managing a 1,400-person bureaucracy that oversees more than 1,600 insurance companies. No other candidates convince us they can better operate inside this maze than Allen.

Tempting, not convincing

Of his competitors, Patrick Wolff is the strongest alternative.

The San Francisco-based 58-year-old financial analyst's sales pitch is simple: He understands the insurance industry better than anyone else. Early in his career, he says that he built auto and home insurance companies; and over the last two decades, he analyzed insurance companies as an investor.

Wolff impressed our editorial board with his nuanced understanding of the industry. California's regulations have distorted prices and, consequently, masked risk.

He's right, but technical mastery will not solve the problem. Wolff will not be able to meaningfully reduce the risk insurance companies now face without help from the state Legislature, which he has no experience working with. He has never moved legislation or translated economic theory into actionable policy. Which Allen has.

Other alternatives fall short.

Jane Kim recognizes, correctly, that the private insurance market is struggling to absorb climate risk. But the 48-year-old former San Francisco County supervisor's solution — a single-payer-style public disaster insurance program — is poorly defined and presents an enormous risk for a state struggling with chronic deficits. Kim points to New Zealand as a proof of concept. But we already have an example of a state-run insurance program here in the U.S. The National Flood Insurance Program is in constant financial distress as its premiums routinely fail to cover the escalating costs created by ever-larger, disastrous floods. California cannot afford Kim's experiment.

Steven Bradford, 60, served nearly 27 years in elected office, including in the state Assembly and Senate, where he represented L.A. County. The Gardena-based retired legislator's main pitch to our editorial board was not a discernible plan but rather the strength of his personality. If he got insurance companies in a room, he could strike a deal. We are not convinced.

Stacy Korsgaden, 62, is the only Republican among the most viable candidates, and her endorsement from the California GOP gives her a strong shot at making it to the November runoff. In an interview with our board, the San Luis Obispo County conservative and lifelong insurance agent repeatedly minimized climate change's role in rising environmental risks. Instead, she laid blame on Democrats in Sacramento who she said have let crime, homelessness and brush fester. Her solution basically boils down to giving insurance companies whatever they want to restore competition, which she expects will solve the entire crisis. Her unwillingness to see this complicated problem outside of a politically expedient, simplistic partisan lens is disqualifying.

What everyone in this race shares is varying degrees of scorn for Ricardo Lara, an L.A. Democrat whose coziness with the insurance industry has tarnished this office.

However, Allen, Wolff and Bradford effectively support Lara's Sustainable Insurance Strategy — which aims to lure carriers into expanding coverage by allowing them to use forward-looking climate models to justify raising rates.

Whoever wins has no easy options.

Over-regulating could scare more insurers away; under-regulating could inflate prices even more. Meanwhile, the conditions for deadlier and more destructive wildfires at the intersection of nature and our cities keep growing. And there is no end in sight.

There is only one candidate who grasps the complexity of this crisis and has the legislative experience to address it.

That is Ben Allen.

To read our endorsements in other critical open races on Bay Area voters' June 2 ballots, please visit mercurynews.com/opinion/endorsements/.

© 2026 the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.). Visit www.eastbaytimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.