There Is A Better Choice For Insurance Commissioner

By Stacy Korsgaden
Guest Editorial

For the first time since Californians began electing their insurance commissioner, there are two Democrats on the November ballot. I understand the temptation to look at two Democrats and leave that race blank. Don’t.

Sitting this race out is not a protest. It is a gift to Jane Kim. Every conservative who skips this contest moves her one step closer to a government takeover of California’s insurance market, and that is a vote for socialism by another name.

I have held a California insurance license since 1988. I built my agency from the ground up. I have sat across the kitchen table from families who lost everything to fire, and from small business owners trying to figure out how to keep their doors open while their premiums doubled.

I ran for this office because California’s insurance market is broken, and the people paying the price are working families who did nothing wrong. I finished third in June, behind Jane Kim and Ben Allen. I respect the voters’ decision. But I will not stay silent about what her election would mean.

Kim Wants to Blow Up the Free Market

Jane Kim believes the answer to California’s insurance crisis is more government. She wants the state to become an insurer itself, with a government-run “Disaster Insurance for All” program. She wants to blow up the free market and her plan risks bankrupting the state.

This is not a consumer advocate’s agenda. It is a socialist one, and it is being sold to Californians as an illusion. The Santa Monica Observer, in its endorsement of Ben Allen said, “Jane Kim has offered a vision that sounds bold until you ask how it is paid for, how it treats fire risk, and whether it would drive more carriers out rather than bring them back.”

Here is what I know from 38 years in this business. Insurers do not leave a state because they want to. They leave because they cannot write policies there at a price that covers the risk. Every carrier that has stopped writing new homeowners policies in California made that decision because Sacramento made the math impossible.

Bring Competition Back to Help Policyholders

The solution is to bring competition back, not to drive the last remaining companies out and hand the bill to taxpayers. When the state becomes your insurer, the state becomes your adjuster, your claims department and your last resort, with the efficiency of the DMV and the budget discipline of the High-Speed Rail Authority.

And who would run it? A progressive political operative with no real world experience in the industry she wants to regulate.

She will see the free market as the villain, government as the hero, and the family trying to insure their home in Paradise or Pacific Palisades as a constituency to be managed rather than a customer to be served.

Don’t Sit This One Out, Republicans

I recently learned that as a San Francisco Supervisor she refused to recite the pledge of allegiance in a protest that defies the fundamental values of our great nation. Now she wants to regulate the largest insurance market in the country as one of California’s eight statewide constitutional officers.

California deserves an insurance commissioner who believes in the people she regulates, in the market that makes coverage possible, and in the country she would be sworn to serve. Patriotism is not a partisan value. Neither is common sense. In order to win, Kim needs Republicans to skip the race. Don’t give her that satisfaction.

About the Author

Stacy Korsgaden of San Luis Obispo County is a licensed California insurance professional and an advocate for free-market solutions to California’s insurance crisis. She was the California Republican Party-endorsed 2026 candidate for insurance commissioner in the 10-candidate primary, receiving 15.5% of the vote.