‘The sexiest race on the ballot’: Why the role of insurance commissioner is suddenly in the spotlight

During the presidential debate earlier this month, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked about her plan to fight climate change. Her response didn’t focus on the dangers of drought or rising sea levels, or unveil an ambitious plan to reign in fossil fuel emissions. Instead, her answer focused on home insurance. “It is very real,” Harris said. “You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up.”Just a few years ago, Harris’s insurance comments may have been considered wonky or boring to voters. But since 2020, the increasing number and severity of natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes have cast home insurance markets into turmoil, leading to an explosive rise in premiums. Unaffordable premiums now represent one of the most tangible ways that climate change is affecting everyday Americans. And this election season, insurance commissioners—the state officials in charge of overseeing these markets—are suddenly in the hot seat. These officials have historically operated outside of the spotlight, steeped in financial statements and wonky regulations. In the 11 states that elect their commissioners—the rest appoint them—these races have rarely received much interest. In some elections, incumbents don’t even face a challenger. In others, state data shows that as many as 17% of voters simply skip over that section of their ballots. “It’s just not something [voters] pay attention to until things go wrong,” said Dave Jones, who served as California’s insurance commissioner from 2011 to 2019. “Right now, things are going wrong.”In recent years, insurance companies have found themselves increasingly on the hook for homes hit by wildfires and severe storms. In Louisiana, a parade of back-to-back hurricanes and extreme storms in 2020 and 2021 caused insurers to pay out well over twice as much money as they brought in. Similarly, in Colorado, where the state has experienced over 40 billion-dollar disasters in the past decade, insurers lost money in eight of the past 11 years. To pay for all this damage, premiums have been skyrocketing nationwide. According to a 2024 study of insurance rates, the average home premium rose 33% between 2020 and 2023. In disaster-prone areas like Florida, the Gulf Coast, and California, rates have increased even more, with some insurers pulling out of markets entirely.  “The insurance crisis that people and businesses are experiencing—not just in California, but across the United States—is the price that we’re paying for failure to more aggressively transition from a fossil fuel-based economy,” Jones said.These rising costs are prompting voters to take a closer look at elected commissioners that regulate the industry in their home states—and it is forcing candidates to more thoroughly consider insurance shifts and climate change in their platforms.States have been regulating their insurance markets for more than 150 years, with New Hampshire appointing the nation’s first commissioner in 1851. These regulators are tasked with setting reasonable limits on how much insurance companies can charge for home, car, health, and life insurance. They also oversee how insurers manage their money, so they have enough to pay their bills when disaster strikes. For the vast majority of their history, insurance commissioners haven’t thought much about climate change.“When I came in, climate change was kind of a footnote,” said Mike Kreidler, Washington’s outgoing insurance commissioner, who was first elected to the office in 2000. “That was something that bothered me a lot, because I saw the risks.”Kreidler’s early attempts at climate action were met with fierce resistance. As an early member of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners climate working group, he recalled some of his peers asking him to remove the word “climate change” from his proposals. “I took a lot of abuse back then on these issues,” Kreidler said. “It’s not something that a number of commissioners wanted to talk about.”Even in progressive states, climate change was often overshadowed by flashier issues. In California, Jones first ran for office in the wake of the newly passed Affordable Care Act. He and his 2010 opponent both campaigned almost entirely on health care issues. But by Jones’s second term, it was clear things were changing. California was starting to see a worrying trend of expensive wildfires: Starting in 2015, California was hit with billion-dollar wildfires every year until 2023. One of the most tragic examples came in 2018, when the Camp Fire devastated the Northern California town of Paradise, leveling entire neighborhoods and displacing more than 50,000 residents. Jones spent his final year in office making sure fire victims received the claims they were owed, and writing recommendations to protect the system against future disasters.  Soon, other states joined California in starti