Your guide to California’s insurance commissioner race

Stephen Hobbs, The Sacramento BeeSacramento Bee

The two Democratic candidates vying to become the next California insurance commissioner have differing visions for the role, setting up an intriguing race heading into November. Do voters want to see a dramatic shift in how home and auto insurance are regulated in the state or do they want less dramatic changes to how the system is currently set up?

Whoever wins between Ben Allen and Jane Kim will take over one of the California’s most difficult political jobs: Overseeing an insurance market that is battered by years of catastrophic wildfires, insurance companies restricting or pulling back business to lower their risk and major premium increases for many policyholders.

Allen, 48, is a Democratic state senator from Santa Monica who has campaigned on finding a balance between protecting policyholders while making sure that insurance companies can continue to operate in the state. He wants to speed up the time it takes to review requests by insurance companies to change their rates while also requiring companies to provide more explanation of why claims are delayed or denied after a disaster. He also wants to expand programs that help residents make their homes more fire-resistant. The graduate of Harvard and UC Berkeley law school is finishing up his time in the Legislature this year due to term limits. He is married with two young children.

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Kim, 49, a former San Francisco supervisor, wants to create a public disaster insurance program, where all Californians would be in one pool and pay premiums based on property value or risk. Kim argues that a state-run model could tie premium amounts with mitigation efforts, which would give homeowners an incentive to invest in efforts to reduce their risk of a fire or other disasters. Kim said she also wants to pursue legislation to prevent insurance companies from raising the rates or dropping the coverage of a policyholder who files a claim. She was previously the state director of the California Working Families Party, which describes itself as “the grassroots party for the multiracial working class, fighting to make California care for all its people, not just the wealthy and well-connected,” but she is running as a Democrat. She is a graduate of Stanford and UC Berkeley law school and lives in San Francisco.

“Right now, insurance companies raise our rates, cancel our coverage, and deny our claims while they rake in record profits — using our money,” Kim said in a campaign statement filed with the Secretary of State’s Office. “I’ll hold them accountable to make insurance more affordable and available and make sure our money works for us. I’ll make claims fast and fair, cap excessive profits, and crack down on illegal price-fixing.”

“I’ll increase competition to bring down costs, protect consumers who are unfairly dropped, make insurers accountable and the process transparent, and expedite rebuilding,” Allen said in his statement. “Instead of creating an untested large-scale system that puts the state and you the taxpayer on the hook, I believe in a proven, practical path that adds insurance options and lowers rates, without gambling our state’s finances.”

Kim has received an array of contributions from individual donors and labor unions and endorsements from SEIU California, State Controller Malia Cohen and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis.

Allen also has collected contributions from unions, many individual donors and endorsements from California’s U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California.