00:00The race for California Insurance Commissioner is one of the most interesting races in the
00:052026 election in California, and that's despite the fact that it's a race between two Democrats,
00:12Jane Kim and Ben Allen. The Office of Insurance Commissioner is responsible for regulating the
00:18insurance industry. In the last few years, the Office of Insurance Commissioner has been in the
00:23spotlight because of the natural disasters that have been taking place across California,
00:27including the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, which happened in January 2025, which exposed
00:33major problems with California's insurance industry. Not only did many of the residents
00:38lose their home insurance policies in the months and sometimes in the days before these fires,
00:43but victims had an incredibly difficult time in many cases receiving any kind of compensation for
00:49their damage. The incumbent, Ricardo Lara, was termed out after his second term, and he was largely seen
00:55as a do-nothing insurance commissioner who spent a lot of time on overseas trips. The two candidates
01:00who qualified for the general election faced off because they were the top two finishers in the
01:04primary. Jane Kim was the top finisher. She's a former San Francisco supervisor, and she is also the
01:11local director of the Working Families Party, which is a socialist outlet. No surprise then she has the
01:16endorsement of Bernie Sanders. Runner-up was Ben Allen, a longtime state legislator, who has drawn
01:22attention for his courageous stances on several issues. He put forward a bill to require the
01:28insurance companies to provide as much of people's policy value as possible for personal possessions
01:33without having to make the dreaded list of all the items they lost. And Jane Kim was recently asked in
01:38an interview why she was running and what her qualifications were, and she struggled to answer.
01:43The same interviewer then asked her what the first thing she would do as insurance commissioner would be,
01:49and she couldn't even answer that. She said basically she would try to get to know the people
01:53in the office. Well, so does everybody. That could create an opening for Ben Allen. It's a classic
01:59matchup within the Democratic Party because Jane Kim comes from San Francisco, which is traditionally the
02:04source of political power in California, and Ben Allen comes from LA, which supplies a lot of votes
02:09but calls very few of the shots within the Democratic Party. You would typically expect the
02:14Northern California candidate to win. But in this case, Ben Allen, who actually has a track record
02:19of legislating on insurance issues, might have the edge against a socialist candidate from Northern
02:26California who can't explain why she's qualified or why she's running in the first place.
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