Marin lawmaker wants insurance post
Assembly Member Marc Levine to challenge incumbent state Commissioner Ricardo Lara
SACRAMENTO — Marc Levine, a five-term Assembly member from Marin County, will run for state insurance commissioner next year, challenging incumbent Ricardo Lara, a fellow Democrat whom Levine says has not taken bold enough steps to stabilize a home insurance marketplace increasingly strained by California’s worsening wildfires.
The elected insurance commissioner, a position created by California voters in 1988, oversees the state Department of
Insurance, which licenses and regulates the industry.
“This can’t be a backwater job at a time when this is the one position that has the ability to affect the most Californians,” Levine, of San Rafael, said in an interview Monday. “We’ve got so much work to do right now that’s not getting done because the current insurance commissioner has conflicted himself out of a job.”
With California now annually confronting record-breaking wildfire seasons, hundreds of thousands of homeowners
each year are getting dropped by their insurance companies. Mainstream insurers argue they can no longer afford to cover some high-risk areas because premiums are too low, forcing homeowners to turn to expensive plans not regulated by the state or a limited statebacked policy of last resort.
As nonrenewals surge, Lara has prevented insurers from canceling or refusing to renew policies for millions of homeowners in and around wildfire disaster areas for two years in a row.
But the state has been unable to come up with a permanent solution. Levine is now pushing a bill that would require insurance companies to offer catastrophic wildfire coverage statewide while creating a state-managed fund to pay for any losses greater than $100 million that they experience in a given year. It would also provide homeowners grants and insurance discounts to harden their homes against fire damage.
Levine said he was called to the issue after the 2017 Tubbs Fire ravaged his district. The following year he carried several successful measures on home insurance, including one mandating that residential property insurers provide an updated estimate of the cost to rebuild each time they offer to renew a homeowner’s policy.
“We want people to have real coverage,” Levine said. “The insurance marketplace isn’t working very well and we need someone dedicated to fixing it.”
As insurance commissioner, Levine said he would also take a more aggressive oversight role to review whether health insurance premium increases are appropriate and root out discrimination in the auto insurance marketplace. He said he supports premium discounts based on good driving, but not those that take into account job and education level, which result in higher rates for drivers who are disproportionately lower-income and people of color.
Levine declined to discuss specifically why Californians should replace the sitting insurance commissioner, but said the position called for “independent, strident leadership” that would “stand up to special interests.”
Lara, who was elected in 2018, faced some controversy early in his first term after accepting tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from people with ties to insurance companies, including one that was seeking his approval for a sale. He returned the money, apologized and paused his fundraising after the San Diego Union-Tribune reported on the contributions.
“No one has worked harder to fight for the rights of wildfire survivors in the state of California than Insurance Commissioner Ricard Lara,” campaign spokesperson Robin Swanson said in a statement. “As the first Latino insurance commissioner, he has been a long-time advocate for communities of color. That’s why he’s supported by his fellow Democrats, and organizations and consumers from across the state.”
The primary for insurance commissioner is in June, and the top two candidates will advance to a runoff in November 2022. Lara, the only openly gay statewide official in California, is likely to draw significant support in his re-election campaign from LGBT rights groups, along with labor unions that contributed extensively to his 2018 race.
Levine, who terms out of the Legislature in 2024, recently hired in his Assembly office a former lawyer and adviser to Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group behind the initiative that created the elected insurance commissioner.
The group has repeatedly clashed with Lara during the past three years over his campaign donors tied to the insurance industry and regulations he has refused to adopt. Levine said he was not running for insurance commissioner at Consumer Watchdog’s urging or with their backing.
“I’m really grateful to have a team that understands how the insurance industry works,” he said.