Jane Kim ’99 has been elected California’s next insurance commissioner, defeating state Sen. Ben Allen, in what has been widely described as the most competitive statewide candidate election in California. The Associated Press (AP) called the race close to 9 p.m. on Saturday night.
Kim will be the first woman and the first Asian American elected to the position. The race marked the first time two Democrats faced each other in a general election for insurance commissioner since California voters made the office an elected position in 1988.
“Thank you to everyone who believed in this campaign to make an under-the-radar, underleveraged office into a champion and watchdog for the people of California,” Kim said as she declared victory on Friday.
Kim, a progressive, finished first in the June nonpartisan, “top-two” primary with 27.4% of the vote and advanced alongside Allen, a moderate backed by the California Democratic Party and much of the state’s political establishment, including U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff ’82 and Alex Padilla. Kim was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Ro Khanna, the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Labor Unions and the Working Families Party.
In a statement on election night, Kim said Californians want a commissioner who will fight for them, “not for billionaires and corporations.” Her message echoed the sentiment that Sen. Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna brought to Stanford during their February town hall. Both politicians campaigned alongside Kim, joining her at an October rally in San Francisco.
Kim arrived at Stanford in 1995, where she was an outspoken student organizer pushing the University to expand ethnic studies. As a freshman, she was a member of Concerned Students for Asian American Studies, one of the student groups urging the University to create the program. The University established its Asian American Studies program in 1997. Kim graduated in 1999, earning a dual B.A. in political science and Asian American studies.
Kim’s political career began in 2006 when she won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Education, becoming the first Korean American elected official in the city’s history, and later served as the board’s president. From 2011 to 2019, she represented District 6 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. There, she led efforts to make City College tuition-free for all San Francisco residents, passed the state’s first $15 minimum wage ordinance and co-led a tax on commercial rents to fund childcare and early education.
After unsuccessful runs for State Senate in 2016 and San Francisco mayor in 2018, Kim served as California political director for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. She later led the California Working Families Party.
Kim takes office in January, replacing term-limited Commissioner Ricardo Lara. She will lead the California Department of Insurance, the office that regulates home, auto, life, pet and workers’ compensation insurance, as well as some health coverage.
The department oversees the largest insurance market in the country and, by the state’s count, the second largest in the world, with insurers collecting more than $400 billion in premiums in California each year.
After a string of catastrophic wildfires in the state, major insurers stopped writing new policies or dropped customers outright, pushing hundreds of thousands of homeowners onto the FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort.
Kim has made this crisis a primary focus of her campaign. Her signature proposal, “Natural Disaster Insurance for All,” would create a state-run program to cover wildfire risk, removing it from private homeowners’ policies. She has also called for penalties on insurers that delay claims, more transparency about how claims are handled and caps on insurance executive pay.
“My opponent and I are not running for the same office,” Kim said in a debate with Allen. “He is running for what this office used to be. I’m running for what this office could be.”