Jane Kim declared victory in the tight race to be California’s next insurance commissioner on Friday morning, speaking to a crowd gathered at a corner of Dolores Park with expansive views of the San Francisco skyline.
Kim, a progressive Democrat, was up with 53% of the vote as of Thursday afternoon. State Sen. Ben Allen, her more moderate competitor, is a Democrat who represents Santa Monica and other parts of Los Angeles County.
Kim told the crowd that her opponent, Ben Allen, called her just prior to the Friday morning press conference and congratulated her on her victory.
Kim and Allen took very different approaches to the statewide post, which regulates the state’s massive home, auto, and wildfire insurance markets, among others. Allen said he wanted to fix the state’s insurance markets; Kim said she wanted to remake them.
“We’re not even running for the same office,” Kim said of Allen on election night at a watch party organized by the California Working Families Party. “He is running for what this office used to be, and I am running for what this office could be.”
One of Kim’s top proposals was a “public, nonprofit disaster insurance system” to automatically and universally cover homeowners for wildfire risks. Her “Natural Disaster Insurance for All” plan is meant to address the higher deductibles faced by homeowners in fire-prone areas statewide.
“We would operate like an insurance company, except it would be nonprofit, and excess capital would always come back to the community, and not flow to shareholders and CEOs,” Kim told Mission Local in October.
That was an apparently winning message in what turned out to be a race of many firsts— it was the first time that two Democrats ran for the position in the general election, and featured the most outside spending from political action committees: Nearly $8.2 million was poured into the race between Allen and Kim.
The vast majority of that money favored Allen. Around $6.9 million flowed into support for Allen and opposition for Kim through independent PACs.
Big backers included cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen (nearly $2.2 million from Californians for an Affordable Future, a Larsen-backed PAC); Jessica Millan Patterson, former chair of the California Republican Party (over $1.5 million from Right Path, Patterson’s PAC) and energy giant Pacific Gas & Electric (nearly $1 million from Coalition for Homeowners Insurance Reform, a PG&E-backed PAC).
Kim announced her victory at the famed golden fire hydrant at 20th and Church streets near Dolores Park. The hydrant — which city legend says was the only operating one in the area and saved nearby buildings from peril during the 1906 earthquake and fire — has become a symbol of San Francisco’ resilience.
It was an apt location for Kim, who has proposed “natural disaster insurance for all,” a single-payer, state-run program.
For Kim, the apparent victory marks a return to elected office after a nearly-eight-year hiatus. In 2019, she finished her second term as a San Francisco supervisor. Kim lost a close race for state senate to Scott Wiener in 2016 and came third in the 2018 mayoral race behind London Breed and Mark Leno. She would be the first woman to serve as California’s insurance commissioner.
